PLDT still keen to monetize part of data center stake

MANILA, Philippines – While PLDT Inc. halted sale talks of its data center arm Vitro Inc. for now, the telco giant remains open to unloading a portion of the $1-billion business in the future to maximize asset value.

The listed telco, in a disclosure on Tuesday, said it has remained on the lookout for “strategic options” that can best serve the company.

“[We] wish to clarify that while discussions regarding the partial sale of Vitro Inc. have been paused, PLDT continuously evaluates strategic options, as and when presented, to maximize value from its data center assets, including potential partnerships, investments, or future monetization efforts,” the company said.

READ: PLDT scraps partial sale of data center business

PLDT chair Manuel Pangilinan said last week they have been focusing on growing the data center business in the meantime.

Prior to this, the company had been in talks with CVC Capital Partners and Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp., but both deals were aborted.

Selling a portion of the data center company was initially planned to help extinguish PLDT’s obligations. But the tycoon said they could sell other noncritical assets instead to raise funds.

PLDT, in total, has 11 data centers with capacity of up to 100 megawatts (MW). In the first quarter, the company saw a 37-percent uptick in its data center colocation revenues.

The telco giant is in the process of designing its 12 data hubs, which are designed to have up to 100-MW capacity. It is targeted to be completed by 2028.

The additional facility will rise on a 10-hectare property in General Trias, Cavite.

In the long term, the company wants to scale up data center capacity to up to 500 MW.

Demand for data centers has been on the rise because of hyperscalers, or entities providing cloud, networking and internet services such as Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google GCP, Alibaba AliCloud, IBM and Oracle. INQ