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By Darwin G. Amojelar, Reporter
THE board of Philippine Long Distance Telephone
Co. (PLDT) on Tuesday approved a share buyback program in a bid to
protect shareholders value.
In a statement, PLDT said it will implement a
buy back of up to 2 million shares or about 1.1 percent of its total
outstanding common stock.
“The buyback program also manifests the
company’s confidence in the inherent value of its shares
especially at times when, from time to time, the market value falls
below such level,” the company said.
On Tuesday PLDT shares jumped P35, or 1.2613
percent to P2,810.
PLDT said the buyback is unlikely to affect any
of the company’s existing or prospective projects or programs as
well as its dividend policy.
“The buyback will continue until the number of
shares earmarked for the program has been fully repurchased, or
until such time as the company’s board of directors determines
otherwise,” PLDT said.
PLDT said it has sufficient unrestricted
retained earnings to cover the repurchase program, adding that the
implementation of the share buyback will be undertaken by PLDT’s
Treasury group.
“The plan is to reacquire the shares on an
opportunistic basis, direct from the open market through the trading
facilities of the PSE and/or the NYSE,” the company said,
referring to the Philippine Stock Exchange and the New York Stock
Exchange, where the telecom company’s shares are listed as
American Depositary Receipts.
PLDT said that the share buyback program
reflects the company’s commitment to capital management as an
important element in enhancing shareholder value.
It also said the program reinforces initiatives
the company has already undertaken such as the declaration of
special dividends on the basis of a “look back” approach on top
of the regular dividend pay out of 70 percent on common shares.
Moodys Investors Service recently affirmed the
telco’s Ba2 senior unsecured foreign debt currency rating and
changed its outlook to positive from stable.
This rating action follows Moody’s decision to
change the outlook of the Philippines’ Ba3 country ceiling for
foreign currency bonds to positive from stable.
PLDT’s Ba2 foreign currency debt rating is
above the Philippines’ country ceiling for foreign currency bonds.
“The foreign currency bond ceiling
incorporates foreign currency transfer risk, which is the likelihood
of the government declaring a debt moratorium should it default,”
Moody’s said.
PLDT provides fixed-line, broadband, cellular
and information communication technology services. It has about 30
million cellular and 1.7 million fixed-line subscribers as of
December last year, with about 58 percent of the market share for
cellular telephony and 63 percent for fixed-line services.
Partly owned by Hong Kong’s First Pacific Co.
Ltd. and Japan’s NTT group, PLDT said net income was P9.51 billion
in the third quarter last year, down by 9 percent compared with the
P10.44 billion in the same period in 2006.
For the nine-month period ending September,
PLDT’s net income slightly grew by 3 percent to P26.5 billion The
company’s consolidated core net income rose 13 percent to P26.2
billion during the period from P23.2 billion in 2006.
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