Globe Telecom Inc., the country’s leading digital platform, said Friday it reduced capital expenditures for next year by 30 percent, returning to its pre-pandemic level of spending.
Globe, a unit of conglomerate Ayala Corp., said the board approved a $1.3-billion capex budget for 2023, down from $1.9 billion this year.
Globe’s move aims to optimize capex spending in the next few years by focusing on maximizing the utilization of fiber assets and taking advantage of the arrangements made with tower companies to boost tower construction.
“Our aim to deliver first world connectivity to the Philippines, combined with the accelerated digitalization brought about by the pandemic, have driven the company to invest significant capex into both the mobile and broadband network for the past few years,” said Globe president and chief executive Ernest Cu.
“After investing heavily on our builds and rollouts, we now have a significant backbone for our network, which allows us to shift our focus towards capital efficiency and optimization, beginning with 2023’s $1.3 billion guidance, with the target of eventually bringing this down to $1 billion by 2024,” he said.
The company’ significant capex investments also fortified the network, allowing for resilient performance during the pandemic and sustained revenue growth in 2022 despite challenging market conditions.
Globe as of end-September this year has deployed close to 1.4 million fiber-to-the homes lines, built 1,064 new cell sites, upgraded over 10.6 thousand mobile sites to LTE, and installed 1,887 new 5G sites nationwide.
Globe’s network rollout momentum continues and remains on track to surpass last year’s new cell site builds of 1,407.
The company posted a net income of P26.5 billion in the first three months of 2022, up 48 percent from P18 billion in the same period last year.
Core net income, which excludes the impact of non-recurring charges and foreign exchange and mark-to-market charges, stood at P16 billion. Normalized core net income was flat year-on-year.
Consolidated service revenue hit a record P118 billion, up 3 percent year-on-year, led by corporate data and mobile services, supplemented by the sustaining growth from non-telco services.