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Stock Commentary

PLDT hits back at DITO: 'SMART is a separate company'

Merkado Barkada
PLDT hits back at DITO: 'SMART is a separate company'
Either DITO is struggling to keep its confrontations straight, or it's playing a political game in the press to buy some time, sympathy, or both.
Merkado Barkada

PLDT [TEL 1450.00 3.97%] [link] chided Dito Telecommunity [DITO 2.54 6.96%] for getting confused about the nature of its debt obligations.

In an emailed statement, TEL said that the P430 million that is owed to PLDT by DITO for facilities that DITO hired TEL to build “has nothing to do” with a separate dispute that DITO has with SMART Communications, a subsidiary of TEL, over damages suffered by SMART which SMART alleges are caused by DITO’s negligent network security.

MB BOTTOM-LINE

For its part, I don’t think SMART has ever publicly said the value of the damages that it alleges to have suffered at the hands of the fraudulent callers gaining access to its network through DITO’s interconnection, but Globe [GLO 2170.00 0.46%] set the number that it has suffered at P622.

Both GLO and SMART have refused bandwidth expansion requests from DITO, and have threatened disconnection, in connection with DITO’s continued unwillingness to cover the damages and make the necessary changes to its network to prevent further fraudulent calls.

This other issue with PLDT is entirely different, but PLDT thinks that DITO is trying to blend the two together to make one (the debt owed for contracted services) seem like the other (the threats of the duopoly to elbow DITO out of the connections it needs to be relevant).

Either DITO is struggling to keep its confrontations straight, or it's playing a political game in the press to buy some time, sympathy, or both.

Either way, I’m fascinated to see DITO’s Q3 financials.

The clock is definitely ticking.

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Merkado Barkada's opinions are provided for informational purposes only, and should not be considered a recommendation to buy or sell any particular stock. These daily articles are not updated with new information, so each investor must do his or her own due diligence before trading, as the facts and figures in each particular article may have changed.

DITO TELECOMMUNITY CORP.

PHILIPPINE STOCK EXCHANGE

PLDT INC.

SMART COMMUNICATIONS INC.

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