Telco titan PLDT Inc. said on Tuesday it has closed the first tranche of its sale and leaseback deal with Unity Digital Infrastructure Inc., gaining P1.9 billion from the transaction.
In a statement attached to a disclosure to the stock exchange, the telco group said it has completed the sale of 135 telco towers to Unity.
Unity is a joint venture between Filipino construction company Aboitiz InfraCapital Inc. and global private markets firm Partners Group.
It entered into a sale-and-leaseback agreement with PLDT in December, involving the acquisition of 650 telco towers for P9.2 billion.
The telecom towers that will be purchased are situated in the Visayas and Mindanao areas, which will provide Unity a portfolio of strategic locations across the country.
“The Master Services Agreement covering the leaseback arrangement for those towers also became effective as of today,” PLDT said in the disclosure.
PLDT expects to transfer the remaining towers “over the next few months as closing conditions are met, with all transfers expected to be completed in 2023.”
The Pangilinan-led telco started talks of tower sale transactions in 2021. So far, it entered into several agreements with various tower companies for the sale of almost 8,000 of its tower assets.
As of end-March, it has transferred 5,182 towers to their respective buyers, gaining P67.6 billion.
In March, the company reported that its profits plunged by 60 percent to P10.49 billion in 2022 from P26.37 billion the year prior, due to the “accelerated depreciation” that it booked last year.
Its telco core income, meanwhile, was 10 percent higher to P33.12 billion from P30.23 billion the year prior, as the company recorded a 6-percent rise in total revenues to P205.25 billion from P193.26 billion.
Individual service revenues accounted for the lion’s share of the revenue pie at P82 billion, which is 5 percent lower than the P86.2 billion.