THE listing of business process outsourcing (BPO) provider SPi Global Solutions, the outsourcing unit of Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT), has been postponed.

“We decided to postpone that for this year. It is highly unlikely that we will list the outsourcing business this year,” said Ray Espinosa, the president of ePLDT, PLDT’s information technology arm.

He cited poor market conditions and the need to improve operations at the medical transcription business for the decision.

“First, the market condition is not good. Second, we have encountered several operational issues that prevented us from reaching productivity levels,” added Espinosa. 

Subsidiary SPi Technologies (SPi) generated revenues of P1.3 billion in the first quarter this year. In addition to the Philippines and the USA, SPi has operations in India and Vietnam. 

“The outlook for SPi’s main verticals varies, with publishing and medical billing looking to continue their strong performance, legal discovery breaking even and focusing on stepping up sales efforts to maximize fixed overhead, and medical transcription continuing to work on improving productivity and margins.

SPi Global consists of Ventus, PLDT’s call-center operations, and SPi Technologies, its outsourcing business. The plan was to form a unit to house Ventus and SPi. “It will be called SPi Global Solutions Corp.,” Espinosa had said.

ePLDT bought SPi for $135.34 million last year.

“We are proceeding with the integration of SPi and Ventus, which we anticipate will result in improved margins. Our other businesses, though smaller in scale and in revenue contribution, are holding their own and will provide opportunities for growth in the future,” added Espinosa.

There are only a few BPO ventures listed on the local bourse right now.

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THE listing of business process outsourcing (BPO) provider SPi Global Solutions, the outsourcing unit of Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT), has been postponed.

Telecom firm Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT) sees core income this year to grow by 5 percent to P37 billion over last year, as it closely monitors inflation, exchange rate and overseas Filipino worker (OFW) remittance levels seen to may affect its financial performance.

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