Globe Telecom Inc. borrowed P9.8 billion from two local banks to finance capital expenditures this year and refinance debts.
The company said Friday it signed loan facilities with the Bank of the Philippine Islands and Metropolitan Bank & Trust Company for P5 billion and $95 million, respectively.
“The loan shall be used to finance the company’s capital expenditures, refinancing of maturing obligations, and general corporate requirements,” Globe said.
Globe has committed to spend P63 billion in capex in 2020, which includes spillover of capex commitments from 2019.
The company in 2019 spent P51 billion for capital expenditures in 2019, with 79 percent going to data-related requirements.
“The record spend(ing) allowed the company to fast-track its network rollout last year by putting up 139 percent more sites and 25 percent more 3G and 4G base stations versus 2018,” Globe said.
“The gains benefited customers through improved download and upload speeds and latency in fourth quarter of 2019 versus fourth quarter of 2018 as evidenced in the latest results of third party network quality test providers,” it added.
Globe said the improvements were achieved despite a 58-percent growth in mobile data traffic over the same period
The company earlier reported a net income of P22.28 billion in 2019 up 20 percent from P18.62 billion in 2018.
Core income rose 20 percent to P22.45 billion in 2019 from P18.73 billion in 2018.
Consolidated service revenues increased 12 percent last year to P149 billion, fueled by the gains from data across mobile, broadband and corporate data services.
Revenues from mobile business rose 12 percent to P111.8 billion, surpassing the P99.5 billion reported in 2018. Globe’s subscriber base reached 94.2 million, up 27 percent from 2018.
The company said revenues of the Home broadband business rose 17 percent in 2019 to P21.7 billion from P18.6 billion in 2018, driven by a rising level of fixed wireless broadband users reaching close to 1.4 million. Total home broadband subscriber base exceeded 2 million, up 25 percent from a year ago.
Corporate data revenues increased 9 percent to P12.8 billion from P11.8 billion in 2018.
