DITO CME Holdings Corp. said Thursday it signed a $3.9-billion loan facility to support the operations of its telecom subsidiary.
The 15-year long-term project facility will be one of the largest long-term debt arranged and syndicated by a group of multinational banks for a Philippine corporation.
The company said the proceeds would be used to extinguish short-term bridge loan facilities totaling $1.3 billion, with the balance to pay contractors and fund the continuing network rollout of DITO Tel.
It said this would further improve the quality of access and user experience and accelerating the take-up of its FWA 5G and mobile postpaid product offerings.
DITO allotted P27 billion for 2023 capital expenditures, lower than last year’s P50 billion.
“This project finance facility represents strategic trust and confidence in the vision of the Company to be a major enabler of digital services in the Philippines,” DITO CME president Ernesto Alberto said.
“The signing of this long-term project finance facility is a key milestone, one that helps ensure future funding activities, in both debt and equity. In combination with the recent equity investments at the DITO CME level, this long-term debt provides DITO Tel with more confidence in achieving its business plan targets at the soonest possible time,” he said.
The company earlier said subsidiary DITO Holdings Corp. issued 2.24 billion shares to Summit Global Ltd., an entity organized and existing under the laws of the Cayman Islands at P1 per share or a total of P2.4 billion.
DITO CME also sold 610 million shares to Xterra Ventures Ptd. Ltd. and 1.59 billion shares to Summit Telco Corp. Pte. Ltd. for P1 each, raising P2.2 billion.
DITO CME earlier booked a net loss of P11.24 billion in 2022 on high operating expenses of its telecom business.