PLDT Inc., the country’s largest telecommunications company, will have to develop its intellectual capital business to drive future growth, the listed company’s chairman Manuel V. Pangilinan said.
Pangilinan, more widely known as MVP, told Context.ph in an exclusive interview that despite the significant amount of capital that the enterprise has spent for network expansion and technology upgrades, the telecom isn’t growing as fast as investors want.
PLDT has shelled out P379 billion in capital expenditures between 2019 and 2022, the bulk of it to expand its fiber network whose footprint has already reach more than half of the country’s over 25 million households.
“Unfortunately, the telco businesses, I think here and elsewhere in the world, are not seemingly growing as fast as the others,” said Pangilinan, who in 2021 ceded his role as chief executive officer of PLDT to long-time lieutenant Al Panlilio.
“The other side of the fence, the intellectual capital side appears to be valued more,” said Pangilinan. “And on that side, the more money you lose, the more valuable the company is. By that token, TV5 should be one of the most valuable companies in the Philippines, right?” he said, suppressing a smile.
Pangilinan said PLDT should start picking low hanging fruit and invest in apps developed within Metro Pacific Investments such as the fully integrated healthcare app mWell of its hospital group and the travel app MPT DriveHub of the tollways group.
“PLDT has got to take a look at those things and we encourage them to take a small piece of equity in mWell and DriveHub,” he said.
Pangilinan said PLDT will also have to extend its data center business by going beyond the hosting of these facilities. He said the telecom giant will also have to address the intellectual capital requirements of the companies that use these data centers.
PLDT is expanding the capacity of its 10 data centers up to 7,500 until 2023.
PLDT reported core profit of P25.4 billion in the nine months to September, in line with the company’s guidance of as high as P33 billion for the whole of 2022.
