MANILA, The Philippines-Saddled with heavy debts resulting from the East Asian financial crisis in 1997 and the continued downturn of the global economy, Pilipino Telephone Corporation (Piltel), the mobile-phone subsidiary of telecommunications giant Philippine Long Distance Telephone (PLDT), was the country’s biggest money loser last year among Philippine corporations with a deficit of 21.74 billion Philippine pesos (US$418.1 million), based on the Securities and Exchange Commission’s 2001 edition of Philippines 5000.
Despite the increase in demand for cellular services, Piltel ended 2001 with a higher net loss as certain extraordinary expense items were charged to its profit and loss account during the first half, reflecting principally the write-down of its analog/CDMA network to focus on its prepaid GSM service.
But Piltel successfully completed its debt-restructuring program in June last year, having received support from the majority of its creditors to restructure debts totaling 39.5 billion pesos (US$759.62 million).
It managed to reduce its debts by one-half, representing approximately 20.6 billion pesos (US$396.15 million) in value. This was done through issuing new convertible preferred shares to Piltel’s creditors that were then exchanged for new convertible preferred shares of PLDT.
