The Philippines' Globe Telecom has reported a 44% year-on-year increase in net profit for the first three months of 2019 to 6.7 billion pesos ($129.1 million), partly as a result of strong data revenue growth.
The company reported revenue for the quarter of 36 billion pesos, up 13% year-on-year. Growth was mainly fueled by increasing data usage across the operator's service offerings.
Mobile revenue grew 11% to 27 billion pesos, with mobile data revenues reaching 16.5 billion pesos, representing 61% of gross service revenues. Total mobile data traffic surged to 370 petabytes for the quarter.
But mobile voice revenues fell 15% to 6.3 billion pesos, with SMS revenues down 22% to 4.2 billion pesos.
Globe's home broadband business reported 21% higher revenue of 5.2 billion pesos, with the company's total subscriber base increasing 22% year-on-year to 1.7 million. Of these, 63% are fixed wireless subscribers. Enterprise data revenues grew 16% year-on-year to 2.7 billion pesos.
Globe's capex for the quarter reached 8.8 billion pesos, representing 24% of topline revenues.
“As we continue to invest in our LTE network, we are also excited with the growth opportunities of our 5G commercial pilot launch in June this year,” Globe CEO Ernest Cu commented.
“Through this launch, we will be able to offer our customers a whole new ecosystem of devices to enhance the way they experience data to the home. This is in line with our proven strategy of making our customers a priority, by providing them a superior digital and network experience, despite all the industry challenges that we face ahead.”