Globe bags fresh loan from BDO (Philippines)

> GLOBE Telecom on Friday said it has secured a fresh loan from Banco de Oro Unibank Inc. to refinance existing debts and fund next year’s capital expenditures.

In a statement, the Ayala-led telco said it signed a P5-billion seven-year floating-rate term loan facility with BDO, making this Globe’s third loan facility this year.

Image Credit: www.globe.com.ph

“We intend to use the BDO facility to fund our capital expenditure requirements for next year, including the initial portion of our mobile network modernization program, which aims to significantly improve network quality and customer experience, increase voice and data capacity, drive down costs, and prepare the network to meet the future needs of our customers,” Alberto de Larrazabal, chief financial officer of Globe said.

Globe had secured a P5-billion seven-year fixed-rate term loan facility from Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. last month, and another P7-billion seven-year loan from BDO last February.

At end-September, Globe had a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.04.

Globe recently announced it would invest $790 million to undertake a massive network modernization and IT transformation program over the next five years to boost capacity, improve network quality and meet the growing demand for bandwidth-heavy services such as broadband and mobile data.

Of this amount, $640 million will be spent in 2012 and 2013.

Globe earlier reported a net income of P2.49 billion, up 4 percent from the P2.39 billion in the same period last year.

In the first nine months, earnings rose 7 percent to P7.99 billion from last year’s P7.45 billion.

Excluding foreign exchange and mark-to-market gains and losses as well as non-recurring items, Globe’s core net income went up by 15 percent to P8.18 billion in the first nine months from P7.13 billion last year.

In the first nine months, consolidated service revenues rose by a tenth to P52.92 billion from P47.92 billion last year.