By Emmie V. Abadilla

Improved data-related revenue growth across all business segments pushed Globe Telecom, Inc. consolidated service revenues to P101.9 billion for the first nine months of 2018, with the third quarter revenues increasing to P34.6 billion or up 2% from prior quarter, (according to the telco’s new PFRS accounting standards).

Net income stood at P15.2 billion, mainly due to the gains in EBITDA, offsetting depreciation charges and non- operating expenses booked for the period just ended.

Depreciation expenses remained at its elevated level given Globe’s continued network expansion and acceleration of its LTE and broadband rollout.

Core net income, which excludes the impact of non-recurring charges, and foreign exchange and mark-to-market charges, stood at P15.3 billion.

Globe’s total operating expenses and subsidy amounted to P52.1 billion for the period, leading to consolidated EBITDA ending at P49.8 billion, with an EBITDA margin of 49%.

“Overall, I am pleased with our third quarter results, and we are optimistic that we can sustain this momentum moving forward,” remarked Globe President and CEO Ernest L. Cu.

“We are happy that more Filipinos will now enjoy faster and reliable internet connection as we draw closer to achieving 95% LTE nationwide coverage. We will remain aggressive with our network investments, which is now nearly 32% of our revenues to be able to support the growing demand for bandwidth-intensive applications and content.”

Globe’s mobile revenues for the first 9 months of the year grew to P77.7 billion , up 8% from a year ago.

From a product perspective, mobile data revenues amounted to P38.7 billion for the first nine months of the year, with tailwinds from increasing consumer spending on mobile data, and sustained growth in mobile data traffic.

Mobile data continued to be the top contributor to the company’s total mobile business, and now accounts for 50% of gross service revenues from 43% a year ago.

Mobile SMS and mobile voice revenues for the period ended at P16.3 billion and P22.7 billion, respectively.

Overall, Globe invested around P32.5 billion, or $618 million in capital expenditures, in the 9-month period to support its growing subscriber base and address its rapidly changing and rising demand for data.

The investment amounts to nearly 32% of topline revenues, among the highest in the region, as the company continues to reinvest in its network to continue improving quality and experience of its subscribers.

About 78% of the total expenditures for this period was for data-related services.

With its capital expenditures plan, Globe not only remains on course to fulfill its commitment of deploying LTE services to 95 percent of cities and municipalities nationwide by the end of 2018 but also allows for upgrading its network to support the pilot 5G deployment in 2019.

To date, Globe has a total of 40,522 base stations, with close to 27,000 for 4G to support the service requirements of its customers.

Total customer base grew by 10% against last year, with growth coming from both mobile and the home broadband front. Globe’s mobile subscriber base totaled 65.4 million as of end September 2018, up 10% from the 59.3 million subscribers reported in the same period last year.

This increase led to mobile data traffic growing by 49% from 430 petabytes last year to 641 petabytes this period.