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Friday, March 29, 2024

PLDT stock fell 31% in 8 trading days

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The share price of PLDT Inc., one of the country’s largest publicly-listed companies, fell 2 percent Tuesday, extending its losses to more than 31 percent in the past eight trading days.

PLDT’s stock moved in the opposite direction of the Philippine Stock Exchange index which rose 43 points, or 0.7 percent, Tuesday.

PLDT, with a market capitalization of P257 billion and a free float of 42 percent, had suffered heavy losses over the past several days on rumors of an impending management shakeup. The company confirmed on Dec. 16 that it incurred P48 billion in cost overrun in a span of four years.

The company announced that it would hold a briefing on Wednesday to clarify the issue.

The company said in a disclosure to the stock exchange that PLDT and subsidiary Smart Communications Inc. embarked on a massive network transformation program.

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It launched large multi-year capital expenditure projects which included LTE and 5G rollout, FTTH rollout, transport network transformation, fiber rebuild and fiber to the BTS, submarine cable expansion, core network transformation and towers upgrade.

“These multi-year investments were designed to regain and sustain network and technology leadership as well as provide the best customer experience,” it said.

PLDT said these projects resulted in Smart’s network superiority, expansion of fiber footprint, increased revenue market share, enhanced connectivity and better customer experience.

“While these substantial capex investments were key to meeting PLDT’s goals, they came at a price—capex investments for these four years aggregated to P379 billion, including an estimated budget overrun of no more than P48 billion,” it said.

The company said the P48-billion capex budget overrun represents about 12.7 percent of total capex spend over the period. It said the estimate was based on ongoing internal forensics mandated by the board and its audit committee and discussions with principal vendors.

“The investigation has, so far, not uncovered any fraudulent transactions, procurement anomalies or loss of assets arising from the capex spend,” it said.

PLDT said its business remained healthy and robust, with earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization for the whole year expected to be within guidance levels of P100 billion and core income between P32 billion and P33 billion.

PLDT said it is undertaking a management reorganization and initiated improvements on its processes and systems to address weaknesses that allowed the budget overruns to occur.

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