Manilla Bulletin | February 7, 2011 | Emmie V. Abadilla
MANILA, Philippines – Seizing on the current low interest rates to pare down its costs, Globe Telecom has signed a seven-year, P7-billion term loan facility with BDO Unibank, Inc. (BDO), to fund part of its capital expenditure requirements for 2011 and pre-pay P3 billion of its existing debts.
“The current low interest rate environment allows us to replace these loans with cheaper debt, generating savings for the company,” Albert De Larrazabal, Globe’s Chief Financial Officer disclosed Monday. “We will use the BDO facility to fund our capital expenditure requirements this year and prepay up to P3 billion in loans that originally mature in 2012.”
The BDO loan was the first loan facility signed by Globe Telecom this year. As of end- September 2010, Globe’s debt-to-equity ratio stood at 1.16.
With the resurge of voice services and the popularity of social networking via mobile phones, Globe is currently expanding the network capacity of its 12,000 base stations and more than 6,500 cell sites to meet increasing demand this year from over 25 million mobile subscribers and one million broadband subscribers.
In 2010, Globe has undertaken major investments in network expansion particularly for its 3G mobile and broadband networks as more Filipinos became avid users of social media, pushing up demand for mobile broadband.
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