PLDT hikes 2022 capex to P85B

Pangilinan-led PLDT Inc. on Thursday announced that it has hiked its capital expenditure (capex) program this year, mainly to support its broadband and data center businesses.

In a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange, PLDT said it revised upward its capex guidance for 2022 to P85 billion from the originally planned spending program of P76 billion to P80 billion.

The telco said the increase will support its updated requirements for the home broadband and data center businesses and will allow additional upgrades of the towers and their passive infrastructure assets.

As of the first quarter of 2022, PLDT reported a net income of P9.1 billion, up 56% year-on-year as consolidated service revenues hit an all-time high of P46.4 billion, up 3% from a year earlier.

The telco said its home broadband business saw its total service revenues grow by 25% to P13.6 billion as the business segment hit more than 3.1 million fiber subscribers.

PLDT’s enterprise business also booked a 7% increase in revenues at P11.6 billion as corporate broadband connections grew 8% while cloud licenses rose 36%.

The company’s individual wireless revenues hit P20.4 billion as mobile data traffic reached 1,010 petabytes, up 30%.

PLDT and Smart president and CEO Alfredo Panlilio said the company is on track to meet its targets for the rest of 2022, with service revenues expected to post mid-single digit growth.

“This growth in service revenues will be underpinned by our continued rollout of fiber ports and LTE/5G, our data center expansion, and our commitment to delivering the best customer experience,” Panlilio said. —VBL, GMA News