THE Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT), the nation’s largest company by market value, posted a net income of P8.6 billion in the first quarter of the year, little changed from a year earlier.

Tax payments and retirement of a portion of PLDT’s outstanding debts, helped trim the companies income.

Core net income grew 11 percent to P8.4 billion from previous year’s P7.6 billion.

Chairman Manuel V. Pangilinan said the PLDT group is on track to meet the top end of the company’s earlier profit forecast for the year.

“The PLDT group’s core income of P8.4 billion in the first quarter bodes well for the rest of 2007,” Pangilinan  said during the presentation of the company’s first quarter results.

Consolidated earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) reached P20.4 billion, up 3 percent from last year’s P19.9 billion. This translated into a consolidated EBITDA margin of 62 percent of service revenues.

Cash flows remained strong at P17.5 billion. From January to March, the PLDT group reduced its debt by $85 million. Net debt balance at the end of March stood at $1.1 billion.

PLDT treasurer Annabel Chua said the company may refinance debts maturing over the next few months.

The company’s consolidated service revenues rose 10 percent year-on-year to P33 billion as wireless service revenues grew 10 percent to P20.8 billion.

The increase is attributed to the combined impact of a 12-percent growth in cellular data, an eight-percent improvement in cellular voice revenues and the 245-percent increase in  wireless broadband revenues.

As of end-March, the PLDT group’s total cellular subscriber base went up by 1.3 million to 25.5 million.

PLDT’s two wholly-owned mobile- phone subsidiaries—Smart  Communications and Pilipino Telephone, added another 500,000 subscribers last month. This brought their combined subscriber base to over 26 million at the end of April.

“We see a continuing trend of the first quarter results as our wireless business continues to be ahead of expectations.

We expect an improvement in the second quarter,” Pangilinan said.

“Our bright spot is the data business, both corporate and retail, and this is why we are committed to rolling out the NGN, which will allow us to further spur growth of our data business and at the same time, facilitate more efficient networks and processes that will eventually enable us to improve the cost stricture of our business,” said PLDT president Napoleon Nazareno.

PLDT has rolled out 230,000 NGN lines to date.

The group’s broadband subscribers reached 327,000 and total revenue contribution from broadband and Internet services have surged 46 percent to P1.6 billion in the first three months.

On the other hand, PLDT’s fixed line business remain under pressure as its local exchange and international long distance businesses continue to suffer from the foreign exchange rate.

Fixed line service revenues declined by three percent to P11.8 billion. Had the peso not appreciated by five percent in the first three months of the year, revenues would have declined only by one percent.

“Our traditional fixed services remain challenging but we are extremely positive about our wireline and wireless broadband businesses which continue to demonstrate robust subscriber take up. Both will continue to grow in importance to our overall business in terms of profit contribution and growth,” Pangilinan said.

Meanwhile, the company plans to acquire other phone firms and a business process outsourcing (BPO) company to expand growth in the outsourcing and telecommunications businesses.

Pangilinan said that the PLDT group is earmarking $100 million to acquire a BPO firm and ‘several hundred millions of pesos’ to acquire one or two small phone companies that are members of the Philippine Association of Private Telephone Companies.

He did not name the companies that PLDT is planning to buy.

“We are not too keen on start-up investments because it will take years to realize profits. There should be a short-time horizon for profit… It must provide value to our business whether directly or indirectly. That is why we are quite careful in looking at the cost of the investment and the returns as well,” Pangilinan said.

The budget for the planned acquisitions is separate from the programmed capital expenditures set between P20 to P22 billion allotted this year.

“During the course of the year, we will continue to look at investment areas that can provide ways to expand growth. In the event such opportunities do not arise or when they do, prove unattractive, we will consider the option of returning additional cash to our shareholders in the most efficient manner possible,” Pangilinan said.

PLDT is also eyeing to increase regular dividend payouts to 70 percent of core earnings.

“We remain committed to our previous guidance of an increased dividend payout of 70 percent, half of which we anticipate to declare when we announce our first half results in August,” Pangilinan said.

SOUTHEAST Asia’s largest food and beverage company San Miguel Corp. (SMC) booked a net profit of P4.33 billion for the first quarter of 2007, up 100 percent from P2.17 billion in the same period last year.

SMPH says net profit up at P1.5B

MALL developer and operator SM Prime Holdings Inc. (SMPH) reported on Tuesday an 11-percent increase in net profit from January to March this year to P1.5 billion on the back of higher mall rentals boosted by its newly opened stores.

THE board of San Miguel Corp. (SMC) approved on Tuesday plans to list separately the company’s domestic beer operations and packaging business at the stock exchange.

THE Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT), the nation’s largest company by market value, posted a net income of P8.6 billion in the first quarter of the year, little changed from a year earlier.

A corporation formed or organized under the provisions of the Corporation Code of the Philippines may be dissolved voluntarily or involuntarily (Sec. 117, Corporation Code of the Philippines).