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By Darwin G. Amojelar, Reporter
GLOBE Telecom Inc. on Wednesday said it lost
potential subscribers in the first quarter of the year owing to
network disruptions caused by power outages in the Visayas and
Mindanao.
The Ayala-led telecom company’s disclosure
foreshadows the potential business losses that the looming power
shortage in both areas would create in the near term.
Under the government’s demand and supply
outlook for both areas, electricity shortfalls would ensue in the
Visayas as early as next year, and in the Mindanao grid in two to
three years’ time.
“We had a few network disruptions that we
believe actually caused our acquisition, particularly for Touch
Mobile, to slow down in the first 45 to 60 days of the quarter,”
Gerardo Ablaza Jr., Globe president and chief executive, told
reporters.
To make matters worse for the firm, the
Department of Energy had projected more power shortages would occur
in the Visayas and Mindanao starting next year.
Besides power outages, Ablaza said submarine and
fiber optic cable cuts had also affected the company’s service.
“While the disruptions of service were almost
immediately restored, meaning within the same day, what we realized
afterwards was there were attritional affects, [which] slowed down
our acquisitions particularly in provincial areas where Touch Mobile
is strongly present,” Ablaza said.
He said without the disruptions, the company’s
mobile phone subscribers in the first quarter of the year would have
been more than a million.
Globe’s SIM (subscriber identification module)
base grew 960,000 in the first quarter of the year to 21.3 million.
Of the total, TM has 8.1 million subscribers and Globe, 12.4
million.
In April, Globe’s subscribers expanded to
around 400,000.
The Ayala-led telco said rising commodity prices
and the impact of a strong peso on the spending power of overseas
Filipino workers’ dependents have dampened demand for the
company’s services.
Globe said its net income hit P3.4 billion, 32
percent higher than last year’s P2.6 billion. This year’s
results included one-time charges of P1.3 billion for the early
redemption of debt.
Excluding non-recurring items, the telco’s
core net income was down 4 percent to P3.5 billion.
Globe said consolidated service revenues at
P15.5 billion were on par with last year’s level despite a more
difficult macroeconomic environment in the first quarter this year.
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