BY DARWIN G. AMOJELAR SENIOR REPORTER

GLOBE Telecom on Thursday said it has secured another loan from a local bank to finance its expansion until next year. In a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE), the Ayala-led telco said it signed a P3-billion loan facility with Union Bank of the Philippines, proceeds of which will be used to finance the company’s capital expenditures and general corporate requirements.

Earlier, Delfin Gonzales, Globe’s chief financial officer, said that new bank loans would be used to finance “funding gap between now and the end of next year.”

The company had increased its capex to $500 million this year from an earlier guidance of $400 million to $450 million.

As of end-September, the company has already spent about $417 million, or P19.6 billion.

Globe also earmarked another $500 million for next year’s capex. Of the total, 35 percent will be spent for broadband network expansion, 30 percent for wireless business and the remaining would go to the company’s working capital, Gonzales said.

The telco has been securing fresh funds from various sources early this year, starting off with the $75-million loan from Citibank N.A., Deutsche Investitions-Und Entwicklungsgesellschaft MBH and Netherlandse Financierings-Maatschappij Voor Ontwikkelingslanden N.V.

It has also secured a $50-million loan from Export Development Canada (EDC) and P1-billion loan Land Bank of the Philippines.

On top of these bank loans, the telco also sold 5- and 7-year debt papers worth P5-billion with First Metro Investment Corp. acting as arranger.

Globe, which is owned by conglomerate Ayala Corp. and Singapore Telecommunications Ltd., said its net income in the third quarter rose by only 2.2 percent to P2.61 billion from last year’s P2.55 billion.

In the first nine months, profit was up by 12 percent to P9.9 billion from P8.8 billion in the same period last year.

As part of its program of expanding market share in mobile commerce industry, Globe—through its wholly owned unit, G-Xchange Inc. (GXI)—has partnered with more banks and local merchants for various services such as remittances, savings, loans, bills payments.

GXI said this has allowed GCash to grow market and also to expand sales force.

Because of this, GXI was able to build a very robust e-commerce ecosystem using the GCash platform, which allows it to use C2C (Consumer-to-Consumer), B2C (Business-to-Consumer) and B2B (Business-to-Business) applications.

GCash service is an “electronic wallet” that allows users to send and receive cash and make payments—including bills, donations and online purchases—via text messaging.

The company said the potential for this kind of service is big because the mobile-phone market is 80-percent penetrated, while 70 percent of the populations are still unbanked or underbanked.

The Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP) recently released a study showing that 1.6 million of active mobile-banking users in the Philippines are still unbanked.

The study also reported that 26 percent of active users have incomes below $5 per day, with unbanked mobile money users spending an average of at least $1.9 a month.