PhilWeb profit surges 74% in 1st 9 months

PhilWeb Corp., the Philippines’ first and largest listed Internet gaming company, reported unaudited net income of P211.8 million for the first three quarters of 2008, higher by 74 percent from last year’s income for the same period. The company’s Internet gaming business continued its robust growth, with bet volumes setting new records month after month.

“We have worked very hard to improve the quality of our Pagcor e-Games Cafes,” said PhilWeb president Dennis O. Valdes, “and the results show in financials. Just these past few weeks, we have had several days when our bet volumes have been over P200 million for the day, which is a significant increase over past averages. More and more people are visiting our cafes, and those that do are spending more in them.”

There are now 109 Pagcor e-Games Cafes in the country, 33 more than at the end of 2007. The café growth rate of 43 percent is outpaced by the total company’s revenue growth rate of 60.6 percent, with total revenue for the first three quarters of 2008 totaling P310.7 million versus P193.5 million a year ago.

“We are also very excited about the Oct. 10 launch of Txtingo Super 5, our SMS-based lottery game,” continued Valdes. “This mobile text game offers a daily jackpot of P10 million and the launch response has been tremendous. Right now the game is only available to Smart subscribers, but Sun will soon be offering the service and we hope to sign up Globe soon after.”

In addition to its strong core gaming business results, PhilWeb also reported strong gains on its investment in ISM Communications Corp., which in turn now owns 77.7 percent of Eastern Telecommunications Philippines, Inc. The company’s equity in the net earnings of ISM was P52.6 million for the first three quarters of 2008, versus P7.6 million for the same period last year.