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BAYAN
Telecommunications Inc., or Bayan, the phone company of
the Lopez group, will settle P240 million in interest
and a portion of its principal debt to creditors for the
remaining months of the year, the company’s chief
finance officer said Monday.
Its debt
payment has reached P2 billion as of end-June this year.
The payments began in September 2004, when the company
went into rehabilitation.
“We
already paid a total—principal and interest—of P2
billion. The total principal paid from the start of the
rehab [amounted to P380.6 million, while the interest
[portion amounted to] P1.63 billion,” said Meldin Al
Roy.
The
official said Bayan is current on all payments. The
company is settling a portion of its obligations every
semester, while interest payments are made quarterly.
Roy said the company is scheduled to repay interest
amounting to P240 million and P140 million in principal
payments up to December this year. By the end of 2007,
Bayan would have repaid its creditors a total of P2.39
billion.
Bayan’s
$325-million debt would then be wiped clean in 2023.
A
subsidiary of Benpres Holdings Corp., Bayan, intends to
use internal funds to pay for its debts. If Bayan is
able to post a healthy performance, then the company may
exit from rehab earlier than 2023, Roy said.
“It will
depend on how the company will grow, so that the company
can generate enough funds to pay [for] all of its debts.
We may also invite investors to come in [and] help us
trim down those debts,” said Roy.
In the
first quarter of the year, Bayan reported a net loss of
P101 million compared to a net income of P357 million a
year earlier due to lower foreign exchange gains.
Revenues, meanwhile, jumped 12 percent to P1.3 billion,
year on year, driven by the growth in income from voice
and data services.
Overall,
Bayan aims to be profitable this year, as the company
sees growth in its data and Internet services.
“The
growth will be coming from our DSL service, but since we
launched a new service called Span, growth will come
from that sector also. We hope to again be profitable
this year and the next coming years,” said Roy.
Bayan is
targeting to register a total of 400,000 fixed-line and
Span subscribers in 2008. Span is the wireless local
loop service of Bayan.
To
support the expected growth of the company’s WLL
service, the company will be allocating a significant
portion of its capital expenditure this year to put up
more base stations to further expand coverage
nationwide.
Bayan is
offering WLL service in the cities of Marikina and
Manila, as well as Naga, Legaspi, Tacloban, Davao and
General Santos.
The
broadband access runs on a CDMA (code division multiple
access) platform, which supports voice, text messaging,
multimessaging and broadband data.
Since
its launch in July last year, Bayan claims it is now the
leading provider of WLL service with the most number of
subscribers and widest coverage of WLL operators.
“By year
end 2007, we project our WLL subscribers to account for
30 percent of our total subscriber base, and to deliver
20 percent of our total revenues,” Roy said.
Bayan’s
has allotted P1.5 billion for capex this year, to be
financed through internally generated cash. |
