Integrated telecommunications company PLDT Inc. said that is on track to reach the core profit of P30 billion citing increased demand for network connections during the past year.

In the first nine months, PLDT’s consolidated service revenues rose by 7% with the telco core income of 10% year-on-year, or P9.3 billion to P135.9 billion. The third quarter contributed a 5% increase YoY or P46 billion.

The company’s enterprise segment also drives record quarterly revenues of wireless and ICT. Enterprise segment’s revenues grew by 2% or P0.6 billion to P31.1 billion in the first nine months. In the third quarter, the segment’s revenue grew 2% or P0.2 billion to an all-time high of P10.7 billion.

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This comes at the heels of the announcement of building a data center that would serve hyperscalers or organizations that provide IT services such as cloud, internet, and networking at scale, among others.

“Data centers, the hyperscaler business, is significant for us and we are focusing that on ICP,” said Alfredo Panlilio, president and CEO, PLDT. “The third-quarter revenue for enterprises is on an all-time high and I think we will even do better in the fourth quarter.”

PLDT will start the construction next year targeting the first quarter of 2024 for completion. It is said to have more power capacity than PLDT’s network of 10 globally certified VITRO data centers combined. It will be telco neutral and will incorporate sustainability in its design and operations.

Individual Wireless revenues grew 3%, or P2.0 billion, to P65.1 billion in the first nine months driven mostly by the demand of work-from-anywhere set up as the government restricted mobility pushing employers to adopt hybrid work setup.

“I think the most affected sector is really the wireless that is impacted this year by difficulties because of economic conditions to the pandemic and increasing competition,” said Manny V. Pangilinan, chair, PLDT.

Wireless

Data and broadband contributed 80% of the segment’s revenues, with mobile data users reaching 40 million and with Smart 5G growing its revenue contribution as Smart continues to expand its 5G network rollout. Smart 5G subscribers posted triple-digit year-on-year growth, while data traffic on Smart’s 5G network more than doubled in the third quarter, up 116% from the second quarter of 2021.

In the third quarter alone, average data traffic per month increased by nearly 20x versus the fourth quarter of 2020.

Mobile data revenues in the first nine months grew by 9% or P4.4 billion year-on-year, from P48.1 billion to P52.6 billion, as third-quarter promos drove the increase in usage. Total data traffic in the first nine months grew 16% year-on-year to 2,458 petabytes. In the third quarter, monthly average data usage per subscriber was 7.7 GB, up 8% versus the second quarter.

Revenues from Smart’s fixed wireless solutions grew 88%, or P1.2 billion, to P2.5 billion. Fixed wireless subscribers breached the one million mark, increasing 24% versus end-2020.

PLDT’s fintech arm Voyager Innovations and its premier service PayMaya is poised to become a revenue driver when its own digital bank Maya Bank start offering services after the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas granted it with digital bank authorization.