Globe chief confident of H2 performance

MANILA, Philippines - Ayala-controlled Globe Telecom Inc. is confident that the strong growth booked in the first half of the year would be sustained in the second half with the ongoing $700-million massive network upgrade.

Globe president and chief executive officer Ernest Cu said the momentum in the first half of the year would carry on to the second semester as the company’s multi-million dollar modernization program is also 50 percent completed.

“We hope to further keep the momentum as we head into the second half of the year, solidifying our position with our innovative roster of services, expanded distribution channels, revitalized customer service processes, and the seamless change-out of our IT and network systems to improve service quality and subscriber experience,” Cu stressed.

Globe reported that its net income fell almost 10 percent to P4.965 billion in the first half of the year from P5.499 billion in the same period last year. On the other hand, service revenues rose six percent to P40.767 billion from P38.392 billion.

Cu said the company’s network transformation program is halfway completed with nationwide cellsite change-out set to finish by first quarter of 2013.

He described that the company’s massive network transformation effort as “different” in many ways from a traditional transformation that other networks go through.

 “At Globe, our transformation is very different because it is indeed building a brand new network covering core elements, transmission, and access equipment. This is no usual upgrade. A brand new network will be coming with capacity many years forward, state-of-the-art performance and superior capacity and capabilities,” he added.

Martha Sazon, head of Globe Postpaid, said in a statement that the company’s postpaid segment continued to acquire more subscribers increasing 28 percent to 1.6 million post paid subscriber with the addition of 348,000 new subscribers over the past 12 months.

Sazon pointed out that postpaid service revenues grew 21 percent as of the first half of the year increasing its total share to mobile revenues to 33 percent from 29 percent in the same period last year.

As of the second quarter of 2012, Globe sustained its growth momentum in consolidated revenues for the seventh quarter in a row, supported by gross mobile subscriber acquisitions of over 6.1 million with the bulk coming from the prepaid segment.

On a year-to-date basis, gross mobile subscriber acquisitions were likewise robust with over 12.2 million, up seven percent from last year’s level driven by the strong take-up for postpaid plans and aggressive acquisition in the prepaid brands.

She explained that the growth was mainly driven by the country’s first-ever fully-customizable and personalized postpaid plans that empowered subscribers to choose the best possible mix of call, text, and browsing services that they need.

 “The phenomenal success of Globe My Super Plan even prompted competing brands to launch their own versions years later. Globe

My Super Plan truly revolutionized and redefined postpaid. It was a game-changing offer that created a huge following among postpaid users today because of the true freedom it gave them, making Globe the undisputable leader in mobile postpaid in both subscriber and revenue shares,” she said.