The Philippines' Globe Telecom has reported a 48% slump in nine-month net profit to 3.5 billion pesos ($79.3 million), blaming forex losses and depreciation costs related to its extensive network transformation projects.
Excluding these non-recurring costs, underlying net income grew 9% to 9.5 billion pesos. Service revenue increased 10% to 67.3 billion pesos, with mobile revenues up 8% to 54.1 billion pesos.
The company ended the period with just under 2 million postpaid subscribers and 34.5 million prepaid customers across its two prepaid brands.
Postpaid mobile ARPU increased 1% year-on-year to 1,195 pesos, and postpaid subscriber acquisition costs declined 13% to 7,428 pesos.
Globe CEO Ernest Cu said the postpaid segment helped drive revenue growth during the quarter, despite only accounting for a fraction of its total mobile users.
“On a subscriber base of almost 2 million subscribers, which comprises only 5% of the total subscriber base, our postpaid segment now contributes 37% of total mobile revenues,” he said.
Broadband revenues meanwhile grew 22%, while Globe's broadband subscriber base increased 15% year-on-year to 1.9 million. Broadband's contribution to total revenues increased to 12% from 10% in 9M12.
Globe reported a 70% year-on-year increase in net additions for the nine-month period, taking its total customer base to a record 36.5 million.