Globe Telecom secures P3-billion credit from BPI

Globe Telecom Inc. borrowed P3 billion from another Ayala-led company, Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI), to fund its capital expenditures (capex), debt payments and general corporate spending.

In a disclosure on Thursday, the telco giant said it had inked a term loan facility with BPI to address its budget needs.

The company has set a $1-billion capex guidance for the year to beef up its network. So far, Globe has spent P41 billion to fund the expansion of its telco infrastructure.

The telco built 684 new cell sites and upgraded 2,723 existing mobile sites. Also, Globe deployed an additional 378 5G sites. As a result, the 5G coverage in the National Capital Region has reached 98.51 percent.

5G, which enables faster internet connection than LTE, is also now available in 94.91 percent of key cities in the Visayas and Mindanao. Before this transaction with BPI, Globe secured multiple credit lines last year for network build and upgrade.

Globe inked a P20-billion loan facility with Sy-led BDO Unibank Inc. and secured a total of P12-billion debt financing from BPI, China Banking Corp. and Robinsons Banking Corp.

Metropolitan Bank & Trust Co. also extended a P15-billion borrowing to Globe.

Unloaded

The company is also raising funds by unloading some of its assets. Globe already sold to several buyers a total of 7,506 tower assets for P96.4 billion.

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The sale and leaseback of tower assets are also in line with the government’s tower-sharing initiative, which seeks to beef up connectivity across the country.

Tower-sharing enables operators to expand their footprint across the country without putting up more facilities, which can also be cost-effective for them. Instead, operators will lease the towers from the independent tower companies that allow multiple users at a time.

Globe saw its nine-month net income grow by 6 percent to P20.6 billion, thanks to total revenues growing by 2 percent to P124 billion.

Such earnings were driven by mobile data revenues rising by 9 percent to P72.9 billion as Filipinos increasingly use their cell phones to access the internet.