Despite booking better revenues, DITO CME Holdings Corp. saw its net losses balloon to P14.21 billion as of September this year on higher costs and foreign currency exchange losses.
The subsidiary of Dennis Uy-led Udenna Corp. said in a disclosure on Monday that the latest bottom line was 167 percent more than the P5.32-billion net losses it incurred in the same nine-month period last year.
For the third quarter alone, net losses were up 80 percent to P5.90 billion.
Consolidated revenues grew by more than five times to P5.04 billion in January to September from P1.08 billion a year ago, which were driven by DITO Telecommunity.
“The group derives its revenue mainly from the transfer of goods and services over time and at a point in time by providing mobile services to subscribers in prepaid arrangements such as SMS (short message service), voice, data and internet,” the listed company said. These were far from enough, however, to shore up profit.
As of end-September, its costs and expenses amounted to P14.93 billion, surging by 88 percent from P7.95 billion a year ago. Foreign exchange losses, in particular, skyrocketed by 519 percent to P13.25 billion for the period.
The third telecommunications player has 13.1 million subscribers as of end-September.
DITO Telecommunity completed and passed its third mandatory performance review in September.
The audit conducted by RG Manabat & Co. revealed that DITO had surpassed its commitment of 70.01 percent population coverage and minimum average speed of 55 Mbps (megabit per second) for its third year.
DITO registered 72.39-percent population coverage and delivered minimum average speeds of 71.77 Mbps for 4G and 801.19 Mbps for 5G.
Rodolfo Santiago, chief technology officer of DITO, previously said they were already talking with potential satellite service providers to expand their service coverage.
Apart from this, DITO was also looking at building 7,000 to 7,500 towers to achieve 80 percent population coverage by the middle of 2023. INQ