The Philippines' PLDT has reported a 21% decline in core net income for 2016 to 27.9 billion pesos ($555.1 million), mainly as a result of higher capex costs associated with its ongoing fixed and mobile network expansion.
Revenue net of interconnection costs declined 3% to 147.6 billion pesos, but excluding interconnection costs and international and national long distance revenues, revenue declined just 1% to 133.5 billion pesos.
PLDT's Home and Enterprise business units grew by 10% to 29.3 billion pesos and 30.6 billion pesos. Collectively, the two segments account for around 47% of service revenues.
Home data and broadband revenues grew 14% to 17.6 billion pesos, while for the enterprise group these segments grew by 22% to 19.2 billion pesos.
But PLDT's wireless subsidiary Smart recorded a 9% decline in service revenues to 66.4 billion due to ongoing declines in SMS and domestic voice revenue. Mobile data by contrast grew 20% to accounted for 34% of service revenues, outpacing both voice and SMS which account for 33% each.
“We faced very tough tests in the past year as competition intensified and the shift to digital services accelerated. Our results reflect the impact of these challenges, but also point to us the way forward,” PLDT chairman and CEO Manuel V. Pangilinan said.
“We are focused on growing our data and digital services. We are doing this by building more advanced and resilient fixed and mobile networks and offering compelling digital services... At the same time, we are re-energizing our wireless consumer business by focusing on quality subscribers. Number of subscribers is not as important metric as it was before.”