Philippines PLDT Cellular Subscribers Top 27 Million End-June - Chairman
MANILA -(Dow Jones)- Philippine Long Distance Telephone ended the first half of the year with over 27 million subscribers, adding around 1.5 million subscribers in the second quarter, PLDT Chairman Manuel Pangilinan said Tuesday.
"It is above 27 million," Pangilinan told reporters, referring to the company's total cellular subscribers. "The second quarter was better than the first quarter, partly because of election-related (spending)," he added.
PLDT, via its wholly owned Smart Communications Inc. and Smart's Pilipino Telephone Corp., added 1.3 million new subscribers in the January-March period, ending the first quarter with 25.5 million subscribers.
Meantime, Pangilinan said discussions between First Pacific and the NTT Group of Japan on the purchase of additional PLDT shares are continuing and should be concluded "hopefully by year-end."
Last year, DoCoMo and First Pacific had discussed a plan to jointly acquire the government's 46% stake in Philippine Telecommunications Investment Corp., a private company that holds 13.85% of PLDT, but a final agreement wasn't reached before the government-imposed February 2007 deadline. As a result, First Pacific had to buy the government's stake for PHP25.2 billion on its own.
Japan's NTT DoCoMo group last month expressed interest to raise its stake in PLDT to as much as 21% from a total 13.4% then. Earlier this week, the Japanese group said it bought additional shares in the second quarter that raised its stake to 15.5%.
-By Cris Larano, Dow Jones Newswires; 632-848-5051; cris.larano@dowjones.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires"
Posted to the site on 3rd July 2007
