Moody’s upgrades PLDT bond rating
By Lenie Lectura, Business Mirror | 07/28/2009 4:07 AM
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MANILA - Moody’s Investors Service has upgraded Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co.’s (PLDT) foreign currency bond rating to Ba1 from Ba2 and affirmed the phone firm’s Baa2 local currency issuer rating.
The outlook for both ratings is table. PLDT’s rating is now in line with the country’s ceiling for foreign currency bonds. Moody’s earlier upgraded the Philippine government’s long-term currency rating to Ba3 from B1 and the foreign-currency country ceiling to Ba1 from Ba3.
The last rating action was taken last May when PLDT’s Baa2 senior unsecured local currency issuer rating was confirmed with a stable outlook.
In a statement, Moody’s said it used the December 2007 Global Telecommunications Industry as the principal methodology in rating PLDT.
PLDT currently has a 52-percent subscriber wireless market share, 60 percent for fixed-line services and about 70 percent for broadband.
The wireless subscribers of PLDT grew by 1.6 million in the second quarter of the year bringing its total number of mobile phone subscribers to 38.5 million from January to June this year.
The PLDT Group ended 2008 with 35.2 million subscribers. This further grew to 36.9 million by end-March. If the phone giant ended the first half with 38.5 million wireless subscribers, this means the subscriber base of the group grew by 3.3 million. The company is set to report its first-half results on August 4.
Revenues and net profit for the first half of the year were “looking good” and “better” than in the same period last year, said PLDT chairman Manuel V. Pangilinan.
The PLDT official said he is optimistic that the group will hit its core profit guidance of P40 billion this year, representing a 5-percent increase from last year, while reported net income could even be higher than the P36 billion it incurred last year.
“We maintain our core guidance of P40 billion but given the first-quarter results which are quite encouraging at P10.2 billion, it is likely that the final numbers will lie north of P40 billion. For our reported net income, we should be ahead of last year if the peso stays at P48 to P49 per $1,” said Pangilinan.
Service revenues are also expected to grow by 5 percent this year to P150 billion. From January to March this year, consolidated service revenues increased by 4 percent to P36.2 billion, fueled mainly by the 6-percent growth in data and broadband revenues.
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