MANILA -Globe Telecom Inc. was granted a P15-billion loan by Metropolitan Bank & Trust Co. to fund its capital expenditures, debt refinancing and other general corporate requirements.
In a disclosure on Monday, the Ayala-led company said that it had signed the term loan facility as it builds up funding for its network rollout this year.
The telco giant has set a capital expenditure budget of $1.3 billion for 2023.
So far, it has invested P37.7 billion in the first half, the bulk or 90 percent of which was for data network buildup to address the growing data requirement.
It built 542 new cell sites and upgraded 5,087 mobile sites in the first half. The telco giant also opened 356 new 5G sites, boosting outdoor coverage to 97.44 percent in the National Capital Region and 91 percent in key cities in Visayas and Mindanao.
In May, Globe, along with Ayala Corp. and Singapore-based partner ST Telemedia Global Data Centers, broke ground for a 124-megawatt data center in Fairview, Quezon City. The parties will be spending about $1 billion to construct the facility sprawling over 83,000 square-meters of gross floor area across four buildings.
READ: $1-B data hub breaks ground in QC
According to its latest quarterly report, Globe has long-term loans payable of P185.37 billion as of end-June.
Fitch Group unit CreditSights, in a research note, said it was expected that Globe’s credit position would get stronger for the rest of the year on the back of projected revenue growth and cash receipt from tower sale.
Globe sold 7,506 telco assets, amounting to P96.4 billion, to multiple tower companies in total. It has completed over half of the tower deals so far.
The cash inflow would “provide greater financial buffer for capital expenditure and potential mild deleveraging,” it explained.
The telco giant saw its first-half net income drop by 27 percent to P14.38 billion due to absence of a one-time gain from asset sale and higher depreciation expense. Total revenues, however, grew by nearly 3 percent to P89.52 billion.