|
|
Globe Philippines Records Lowest Net Adds Since Q1 06
Globe Telecom operates two networks in the Philippines, one under its own name and one branded Touch Mobile. Its aggregated customer base stood at 23.75m at the end of Q3 08, making it the countryÃ's largest operator - barring an extraordinary quarter from Smart, which finished Q2 with 20.76m customers.
The penetration rate in the Philippines is approaching 70%, and growth appears to be flattening out, if not tailing off. This is certainly the case for Globe, which saw its annual customer growth rate fall from 32.9% in Q3 07 to 23.6% in Q3 08. In real terms, net additions stood at 1.01m, down 7.6% compared to Q3 07. However, this does not tell the whole story; in fact, there was a considerable discrepancy between the two sides of GlobeÃ's business. While Globe Telecom added just 0.19m customers in Q3 08, compared to 0.50m in the year-earlier quarter, budget prepaid service Touch Mobile added a record 0.82m. Touch has now outperformed Globe for net additions for seven of the past eight quarters, but it had never recorded a figure more than double that of Globe - let alone a figure more than four times as large.
Globe customers still outnumber Touch customers, with relative bases of 14.08m and 9.66m respectively. However, Touch saw annual growth of 41.8%, compared to 13.5% for Globe. The success of Touch is almost certainly linked to the current economic climate, with an ARPU of BWP98, less than half the Globe prepaid ARPU of BWP198. Both have seen substantial falls, with TouchÃ's ARPU down 30.0% year on year and GlobeÃ's prepaid ARPU down 13.9%. GlobeÃ's contract ARPU also fell, but after a 9.0% decline it was still much higher at BWP1,391, which explains why the contract base constituted just 3.1% of the total. The SAC figures for Touch and Globe prepaid fell ever further than the ARPUs, with Touch down 79.8% to BWP19 and Globe prepaid down 58.1% to BWP31. This yields respective payback periods of just 5.9 and 4.8 days.
However, the drop in SACs did not show through to the financial figures. Quarterly wireless revenues were down 4.2% at BWP13.7bn, while EBITDA fell 2.9% to BWP9.2bn, leaving the margin off 1.6pp at 59.6%.
Posted to the site on 20th November 2008
This article was extracted from The Mobile World Briefing, the weekly newsletter from The Mobile World.
To download a sample issue of the Briefing in PDF format, please click here.
For more information including full subscription pricing, please visit The Mobile World