The Philippines' Globe Telecom has posted a nearly fourfold increase in net profit for the first half of the year, mainly due to non-recurring items.
Net profit grew 385% year-on-year to 6.8 billion pesos ($155.2 million), thanks to improved revenue, lower depreciation charges, favorable forex fluctuations and lower interest expenses.
Excluding one-off items, core net income increased by a more modest 18% to 7.6 billion pesos. Revenue rose 7% to 47.7 billion pesos.
Mobile revenue improved 5% to 35.8 billion pesos, with postpaid revenue up 11% to 14.6 billion pesos. Globe's mobile subscriber base increased by 18% year-on-year to 42.7 million.
Revenue from Globe's broadband business swelled 14% year-on-year to 5.9 billion pesos, with subscriber growth increasing 24% to 2.2 million.
Wireless broadband revenue climbed 30% while fixed broadband revenue grew 17% to 2.6 billion pesos. Bucking the global trend, fixed voice revenues also improved 10% year-on-year.
Globe's capex budget for 1H14 was around 11 billion pesos. Just over half (54%) of this was spent on data-related access and transport infrastructure, including HSPA+ and LTE rollouts.
For the second quarter, mobile revenues reached a new quarterly high of 19.3 billion pesos, with mobile data revenues swelling 23% sequentially to 3.4 billion pesos.