Bayan open to new investors, technology partners

MANILA, Philippines - Lopez-owned Bayan Telecommunications said it welcomes the possibility of new money coming in from investors, as well as new partners in terms of technology.

Bayan chief executive consultant Tunde Fafunwa said they have always been open to potential investors, both in terms of new funds as well as new technology.

Benpres Holdings Corp., the investment holding company of the Lopez Group, earlier identified Bayan as one of its non-core businesses that it could sell at the right price to trim Benpres’ debts.

However, of late, Benpres has not been too keen on disposing of additional assets, following the sale of a significant portion of the Lopezes’ stake in Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) to the PLDT Group. A member of the Lopez family earlier told The STAR that the funds generated from the sale are sufficient at the moment.

But Fafunwa said it will take several more years before Bayan starts generating a positive bottom line, mainly due to huge foreign exchange losses resulting from a large dollar-denominated debt burden incurred at the height of the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s.

“If not for our foreign exchange losses, we would have been positive (net income) this year,” Fafunwa said.

About 87 percent of Bayan’s loans are dollar-denominated. Most of these debts were incurred when the peso exchange rate was at around 25 to $1.

And because the peso was stronger this year compared to last year, the company was able to cut its foreign exchange losses to P710 million this year from P1.6 billion last year.

Meanwhile, Bayan’s capital expenditure budget for this year is at P1.3 billion, half of which will be spent for their digital subscriber line (DSL) business and a large part of the remainder for their wireless landline operations.

From 180,000 subscribers to date, the company expects its Bayan wireless landline (BWL) subscriber base to increase to 206,000 by yearend. Officials revealed that they continue to dominate the wireless landline market, with a market share of 60 percent, even as they stressed that their subscriber base is predominantly postpaid and is all current.

“A postpaid subscriber is an active subscriber and a postpaid account generates a higher average revenue per user (of around P600 per subscriber) compared to prepaid,” a company official pointed out.

More than 30 percent of Bayan’s service revenues are from the wireless landline business.

The company also projects that its DSL subscriber base will grow from the current 90,000 to 105,000 by the end of 2009.

From around 20 million this year, the Philippines is expected to have over 35 million Internet users by 2012, according to Nielsen’s Net Index Topline Report.

Also yesterday, company officials revealed that they are set to launch an additional feature of the BWL – voice SMS or text messaging.

Bayan has also launched an Internet skills training program for the elderly through ‘Teach Lola,” in a bid to bridge the digital between the young and old.