PhilWeb declares 10¢ cash dividend

Manila, Philippines - The board of PhilWeb Corp., the country’s first and largest listed online technology firm, has declared a cash dividend of 10 centavos per share, payable on May13, to shareholders of record as of April 28.

The total dividend payment will amount to over P126 million, based on the total 1.26 billion outstanding shares of stock of the company.

PhilWeb president Dennis Valdes noted that the dividend declaration is based on the firm’s continued profitability and strong cash flows. “We are proud and happy to be able to continue making regular dividend payments, exactly as we committed to shareholders last year.”

PhilWeb paid its first-ever dividends in August 2010.

The company earlier reported a 28 percent rise in unaudited net income for 2010 to a record P708 million from the P551 million achieved for 2009.

Revenues reached P1.04 billion, a 27 percent increase compared to the previous year.

“We are particularly pleased with our 2010 financial results, even though we only opened 19 new PEGS (PagcorE-Games) cafes all year,” Valdes said.

“On the plus side, we have a new contract with Pagcor that allows us to open a minimum of 100 new PEGS each year. As a result, we expect our PEGS business in 2011 and beyond to grow even more substantially than the yearend count of 190 PEGS.”

Additionally, the validity of PhilWeb’s contract with the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. (Pagcor) has been extended from 2012 until July 2016, and may be renewed further by mutual agreement.

Valdes also disclosed that the company remitted a total of P1.3 billion to Pagcor for 2010, representing the state gaming agency’sshare of the PEGS business.

He noted that the Pagcor share for these businesses come with no capital expenditures or operating expenses on their part. Thus, the total remittance flows directly to their bottom line.

Valdes noted that the prospects for PhilWeb in 2011 are extremely bright, considering the PEGS expansion and also on the international front.

PhilWeb previously disclosed that it had received a license from the Cambodia Ministry of Finance to operate a 6/49 lottery in that country. The license allows PhilWeb to launch both paper-based and mobile-based forms of the lottery.

“The Cambodia license will be a game-changer for PhilWeb. Our international expansion strategy has begun to take root, and we expect that the other licenses we are working on, in countries such as Laos, Guam, Vietnam, Saipan, Palau, Papua New Guinea, East Timor, Nepal and others, will soon come to fruition,” Valdes explained.