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THE
phone giant is not immune to economic concerns affecting
the country after all. The rising inflation, coupled
with the peso’s continued rise against the dollar, has
started to take a toll on the Philippine Long Distance
Telephone Co.’ (PLDT) businesses.
Manuel
Pangilinan, PLDT chairman, noted that there has been a
slowdown in cellular subscriber take-up this month.
“It must
be the [rising] inflation…cutting to the disposable
incomes of consumers. I was recently at the WPD [Western
Police District]. There were guests from the mass
railway transit systems. They’re saying their putting up
more trains, which indicates that consumers are feeling
the pitch. They prefer to ride public transportation
which I think is an indication that inflation is
probably starting to bite. So, I think we are seeing
that somewhat in our subscriber take-up in May,” he
said.
Pangilinan said PLDT remains cautious about the downturn
and rising consumer prices. “With the effect of
inflation created by higher pries petroleum and the
like, we feel a slowdown and I think we may be seeing
signs of that manifesting itself starting this month, in
the month of May,” he said.
The
telco executive also said it is still “too early to
tell” if PLDT can sustain its forecast subscriber growth
of one-and- a-half million every three months this year.
PLDT’s
wireless business added more than two million
mobile-phone customers in the first four months of 2008.
At the end of April, the PLDT Group had more than 32
million mobile subscribers, representing a 55-percent
share of the local wireless market.
Rival
Globe Telecom, owned by Ayala Corp. and Singapore
Telecom, had 21.3 million mobile-phone subscribers at
the end of the first quarter, adding just under a
million.
Sun
Cellular, the mobile brand of listed phone firm Digital
Telecommunications Philippines Inc. (Digitel), said it
now has approximately six million subscribers from 5.3
million at end-March.
Pangilinan said, while the company is cautious about the
downturn and rising consumer prices, it is confident for
now that 2008 would be a better year.
When
asked if PLDT will revise its target core profit for
this year, Pangilinan said the target remains unchanged.
“It’s still P32 billion for now. First-quarter core
income was about P9.3 billion to P9.4 billion. We are on
track to meet our P37-billion forecast,” he added.
For the
first three months of the year, PLDT’s core net profit,
which excludes foreign currency and derivative gains,
went up by 11 percent to P9.3 billion mainly due to a
6-percent rise in service revenues and strong growth.
The
company earlier said its core net profit would rise
by 5-percent this year to P37 billion, slower than last
year’s 11 percent.
PLDT,
which is partly owned by Hong Kong-based First Pacific
Co. Ltd. and Japan’s NTT Group, will review its guidance
numbers in the next coming months.
“The
time to reassess whether we will need to revise our
guidance number is when we release our third quarter
number results. We will announce our first-half results
sometime in August, probably by August 10. By then, we
would know how things turned out,” said Pangilinan. |
