Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, August 5) — PLDT Inc. is “open to the idea” of selling its tower assets that are “not strategic” in maintaining the telco giant’s dominance in the market, its chairman Manuel V. Pangilinan said, seeing this as a way to jack up the group’s financial position.
The business tycoon confirmed the group is exploring the idea of disposing “part of our towers”. Pangilinan announced the plan as a Bloomberg report stated that PLDT may strike a deal valued at about $800 million for selling towers.
“We are open to the idea, I think many of the data has to be worked out… whether the number of $800 [million] is the right number or not, we don’t know yet at this stage,” Pangilinan said during PLDT’s financial briefing Thursday.
“In our discussion with the banks, I think they managed to persuade us that if we were to let go of a certain number of our towers that were not strategic to our position to maintaining our position as a dominant network in the country,” he said.
But Pangilinan said the group was “reluctant” to free up its network assets as he claimed PLDT has “the most extensive and best network” in the Philippines.
“So you don’t want to let that go because that will open you to competition,” the PLDT chief said.
However, Pangilinan acknowledged that the move could also bolster the group’s financials
“Purely from financial transaction could probably translate to a significant financial gain. Some of these towers are probably, fully, substantially appreciated,” he said.
“We are spending a lot of capex (capital expenditure) this year and that could help our financials moving forward as well,” Pangilinan said.
The PLDT group, he said, will work on identifying the towers for the possible disposal.
Meanwhile, PLDT said its telco core income jumped 10% to ₱15.2 billion on the back of high demand for data and broadband.
Consolidated service revenues also increased 9.7% to ₱91.6 billion against the ₱83.5 billion a year earlier.
