Globe Telecom Inc. is confident that its lowered capital expenditures (capex) for 2023 will still allow the Ayala-led telco to sustain its growth momentum “without sacrificing customer experience.”
In a press briefing on Thursday, Globe CFO Rizza Maniego-Eala said the company decided to lower this year’s capex to $1.3 billion from $1.9 billion in 2022, as it already frontloaded most of its expenses during the pandemic.
“We intentionally spent—ramped up—our capex during the pandemic because of the Bayanihan Law,” she said, noting that the law enabled Globe to hasten the deployment of new infrastructure both for mobile and broadband.
Maniego-Eala said the company will now “maximize the assets” that it built over the past three years.
“That gives us confidence to reduce our capex spend to $1.3 billion this year and $1 billion next year without sacrificing customer experience and revenue opportunities,” she said.
Globe expects its revenues to grow by “mid-single digit” this year. In 2022, Globe booked a 4-percent increase in its top line.
Globe profits rose by almost half in 2022 mainly due to an all-time high top line and the partial sale of its tower assets and its data center business.
Its full-year 2022 net income reached P34.6 billion or 46 percent higher than the P23.7 billion it netted the year prior. The mobile operator’s consolidated revenues were up 4 percent to P158 billion, an all-time high, fueled by both corporate data and mobile services.
Globe also booked a one-time net gain of P8.4 billion from the partial sale of its data center business, as well as a net gain of P6.2 billion from the sale and leaseback of its tower assets. The telco’s total operating expenses stood at P78.9 billion.
Its core net income, which strips off one-time gains and losses, was 9 percent lower to P19.2 billion from P21.2 billion.
Globe President Ernest Cu said the company will also be focusing on its portfolio companies—digital institutions that provide services beyond telco—especially, KonsultaMD.
“One of the criteria that we looked at in terms of scaling business is the size of the problem. Healthcare access is a very big problem in our country,” he said. “We are very bullish in the health care segment and that is something that we’ll be focusing on.”