Easycall okays paid-up capital hike to P150 million

MANILA, Philippines - The board of publicly listed Easycall Communications Philippines Inc. (ECPI) has approved an increase in the company’s paid-up capital from P103.4 million to P150 million.

ECPI general manager Renato Vicente Martinez said the increase in capital will be made through a stocks rights offer or private placement.

He explained that in a stock rights offer, each shareholder will be given the right to acquire one share for P1 for every two shares currently held by the shareholder.

The National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) earlier approved ECPI’s application to install, operate and maintain a nationwide data communications network.

The approval was granted subject to the condition that within eight months from the issuance of the provisional authority, ECPI will infuse an additional P10 million in paid-up capital and not through a loan, in order to make the communication network viable.

ECPI is targeting schools and hospitals to drive up revenues for its plan to put up a nationwide data communications network.

In a submission of its financial study to the NTC, the company said its service offering involves the sale of bandwidth to primary and secondary medical hospitals as well as to educational institutions. The total project costs P6.59 billion over a five-year period.

Its proposed Internet service offering with a speed of 512 kilobytes per second will be priced at $240 (approximately P11,500) per month; up to one megabyte per second (Mbps) at $500; and up to two Mbps at $800 monthly.

The company has identified a total of 1,898 schools nationwide as prospective clients for a five-year period with revenues seen to reach P4.82 million on the fifth year of operations.

ECPI is eyeing almost P650,000 in revenues from the 253 hospitals it wants to tap as clients. Its projected revenues for the five-year period is estimated to reach P5.47 million.