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PHILIPPINE Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT) is again
revising its core net income target this year from P33
billion to P34 billion on the heels of the firm’s
first-half results that rode on its mobile-phone
business and election-related spending.
Earlier,
the country’s biggest company by market value has set a
core profit target of P31.5 billion this year. The
numbers have since been raised to P33 billion.
“Given
the strong performance of our first half, we are
revising again the guidance number to the north of P33
billion and possibly all the way up to P34 billion,”
chairman Manuel Pangilinan said.
The
group could even match last year’s net income of P35.1
billion, Pangilinan said. “At P34 billion in core net
income, we are already P2.5 billion ahead of last year’s
core net profit. We need P1 billion more to match the
reported net income last year,” he said.
This
could be done by selling idle properties and spurring
foreign exchange gains in the remaining months of the
year, Pangilinan said.
PLDT
reported a 25-percent jump in second-quarter profit as
election-related spending boosted mobile phone and
Internet use.
Net
income rose to P8.43 billion from P6.73 billion a year
earlier, the company said Tuesday in an e-mailed
statement. Revenue, mostly from calls and text messages,
advanced 11 percent to P34.95 billion.
“There
was strong subscriber growth in the wireless side and
the elections could have stimulated volumes,’’ said
Ricardo Puig, head of research at Wealth Securities
Corp. “There’s also income arising from the elections
that may have been used to buy cellular phones and
personal computers,’’ which would have boosted demand
for Internet services.
The unit
of Hong Kong’s First Pacific Co. and Japan’s NTT DoCoMo
Tuesday declared an interim payout of P60 a share and a
special dividend of P40 on last year’s profit.
In the
first half of the year, the PLDT Group’s core net income
rose 13 percent to P17.2 billion. (With reporting by
Bloomberg) |
