PLDT Inc.

For today's presentation, we have with us Mr. Manny Pangilinan, Chairman and CEO, Mr. Al Pandillo, PLDT Chief Revenue Officer and President of Smart Communications, Ms. Annabel Limchua, Chief Finance Officer, as well as other members of the PLDT Management Team. At this point, let me turn the floor over to Mr. Pandillo to begin the presentation.

Thank you, Melissa. Any other presentations? Thank you everybody and thanks for being here this afternoon. Let me just flash the presentation. Julie? Melissa, do you have it? Sorry.

Let me, yeah, we'll just check.

Okay, thank you. Again, you know, we are reporting our first quarter 2021 financial operating results. Before I pass on to Annabel, I'd just like to go through a few slides. Next page, please. You know, it's been still a very difficult first quarter. As you know, the lockdown remains to be in place and really vaccination, it won't come in until the second half of the year and there's a lot of restrictions. In our business as we speak. But our growth means getting it right for our customers. We owe it to them to do our very best despite this challenging environment that we are actually currently in. Next page, please. Having said that, happy to report that our first quarter revenues for 2021 hit 44.8 billion. This is 3.3 billion in revenue terms above the same period last year, or 8%. If you recall, our fourth quarter 2002, and fourth quarter normally the highest for the year was 44.9. So we were not far off from the fourth quarter of last year. So we're very happy with this performance despite the challenges that we face now. And 76% of the revenues are attributed to data, which is really an incremental 4.5 billion versus the same period of last year. Next page. And if you subdivide this into the four segments, individual, although challenged during this time because of the issue on actual mobility and wallets being, you know, because of the economic issues, the wallets of our customers are also challenged. Despite that, it still grew at 7% or 1.4 billion in revenue terms to end the first quarter at 22.1 billion. Enterprise also challenged with a lot of the SMEs being hit by the lockdown and by the hit on the economy who have closed down on their businesses still grew by 4% or 400 million despite the major challenges. International at 1.5 billion. Thank you very much. is actually installing three times the capacity that we're able to install the same period of last year. So we have improved a lot in terms of our capacity. Demand remains to be strong and it's something that will continue, I think, as we go on for the rest of the year. Next page, please. So we will continue to push on revenues, obviously, supporting our customers' passion and purpose. A lot of offers from the wireless side, very attractive offers for our customers, especially on 5G, as we roll out more of 5G, and seamless available through multiple channels, online and offline means. to make sure that we're able to still be engaged with our customers. We want to quickly respond to the needs of our customers. That's why a massive continuous expansion of our fiber footprint and expanded content or entertainment beyond connectivity are the key initiatives of both home and also wireless for our customers. and really become a reliable partner in the most difficult times. And enterprise helping a lot of businesses hopefully get back to its feet in terms of beyond fiber offering, but potentially the next wave of growth for enterprise, which is the hyperscalers that we've mentioned in the past. Next page. So we champion connectivity as a fundamental human right. Hashtag world class internet is our aspiration for all our customers across all segments of the business. Next page. And we're very proud of this. Almost a little over a year ago, we made a bold decision to really get into 5G as soon as possible. And we're happy to share here that as of the moment, we have about 2,600 5G sites as of April 25. and we've been cited by UCLA as the SMART leading the 5G download speeds which more than doubles our competitors. So SMART has the fastest 5G network in the Philippines as we speak and this 2600 towers will continue to expand as we again move forward for the rest of the year. So a major focus for us. We've been working very hard on this and I'd like to really have a shout out to our network team despite the issues on lockdowns and the difficulties moving around during the lockdowns. Our network team continued to work hard in maintaining our internet speed leadership across both fixed and wireless networks. So happy to share here that we have been cited as the superior network that remains to be strong by three independent speed analytics firms. One, for example, from UCLA, they have said that the PLDT has the fastest average download speed and upload speeds in 16 out of 17 key regions in the Philippines. and OpenSignal in wireless. For the first time in our history, for the first quarter of 2021, we swept the awards that were being measured by OpenSignal from video download and upload experience, from availability and gaming. So we've swept that for the first time and very proud of that. Again, hard work from our network guys. And for UMNAT, Best in Test in April 2021 based on data collected the last six months. Smart being the best in test. So next page. So just wanted to share with you the latest first quarter 2021 results of UCLA. If you take a look here, I think if you look at the Philippines, in terms of fixed broadband, ranks 81st which is 11 spots better than the last time that it was measured out of 177 countries and ranks 22nd or two spots better in Asia with an average speed of 46.25 Mbps. But PLDT is actually above Philippine average. So PLDT's average is 55.86 Mbps And if you compare that against Philippine ranking, if you are in the list of the global countries, we are 15 spots or slots higher than Philippine ranking. And in Asia, we are four slots higher in ranking. Next page, please. And then for wireless, I mean, the same story. The Philippines is ranked 86th. Actually, it went down by three spots. of 140 and 27th in Asia, an average speed of 25.43. But SMART is above the Philippine average at 31.42. We are again 15 spots higher than the global standings against the Philippine ranking and four spots higher also against Philippine ranking in Asia. So we remain to really invest in network in making sure that we're able to provide for the best customer experience for our customers. Next page. And that was the first quarter. But according to our data for the month of April, we have continued to increase the speeds, both in fixed and in the mobile. So in fixed, again, above Philippine average, we were at 55.86 in March, and we've improved it even further to 57.81 in April. And for mobile, also above Philippine averages, from 31.42, it is now up to 42. I think a big part of this is also a lot, again going back to the 5G, a fair amount of customers now are really running on our 5G network. Next page. So again, on top of a lot of those good news, obviously a lot of hard work still needs to be done, and we continue to serve our customers as a North Star. At the same time, we do have a purpose of connecting and empowering Filipinos everywhere, and in the future, we will incorporate our sustainable development strategies, which is really close to the core business of PLDT Smart, and we will continue to share that. As we know, ESG has been a very important aspect of investors' At this point, I'd like to shift it over to Annabel. Thank you very much.

Thanks, Al. Next slide, please. As Al has previously communicated, we hit 44.8 billion in the first quarter of this year, exhibiting an 8% or 3.3 billion growth year-on-year. As you can see from this slide, highest growth was registered by our home business at 19%, accounting for 1.7 billion or more than half of the growth that we showed last year. Individual continues to be on the growth path with 1.4 billion or 7% increase and enterprise showing a steady 4% increase. Next slide. On the back of this 8% increase in our revenues, we were able to see our EBITDA hit 23.3 billion pesos or a 51% margin are showing a 7% growth year-on-year compared to the 21.6 billion level last year. While our expenses are higher, that's also partly exacerbated by the higher provisions that we booked this year at 1.6 billion versus 1.1 billion in the first quarter last year. Although I must note that the provisions of 1.6 is lower than the average that we recorded last year. With the higher depreciation and financing costs coming in at about 1 billion and 300 million higher, we were able to still report 7.5 billion telco core income, higher by 9% year-on-year compared to the 6.9 billion last year. Next slide. Just to also go back a bit in time, in the first quarter of 2019, Our total service revenues were at 38 billion pesos. A year after that, that was 41.5 billion. And this year, first quarter, we hit 44.8 billion with the 8% increase year-on-year. Next chart, please. Data clearly propelled the growth in our revenues with data broadband revenues up 15% year-on-year and now accounts for 76% of overall revenues. Next chart. In terms of the mix of data and broadband revenues, mobile internet accounts for more than half of that, with a 13% increase to 16.5 billion pesos of mobile internet revenues during the first quarter of this year. That's supported by an increased number of mobile data users, close to 40 million now, using 777 petabytes During the first quarter, that shows a 32% increase in mobile data traffic usage year on year. Home broadband will be the next largest component of our data revenues. And in March, we are pleased to note that our total installs and upgrades have hit a high of 129,000 already. Corporate data and ICT also continue to support the growth in data revenues. Next chart. In terms of subscriber numbers, our fixed broadband numbers, just to highlight, were at 2.4 million as of the end of March after registering an increase of 112,000 net ads during the period. And then in terms of the fixed wireless, we have something like 900,000 fixed wireless to make up 3.3 million broadband users. These numbers, just to note for the analysts, it represents build lines. So in terms of our actual connects, there's a bit of a lag in terms of how much is actually built in the same month. Some of it will carry over into the following month. So just to compare, the gross additions that we report from a build line perspective are 241,000. But in terms of actual new installs, we achieved 257,000. during the first quarter of this year. Next chart, please. This just kind of recaps again that our growth in revenues supported the growth in EBITDA of 7%. offset of course by some increases in OPEX provisions and subsidies. The higher EBITDA as well as the lower income taxes as partly because of the implementation of the new corporate income tax rate under CREAT helped supported the growth in our telco core from 6.9 billion last year to 7.5 billion this year. Next chart please. EBITDA of 23.3 billion in Q1 was actually an all-time high. It was 7% higher than Q1 last year. It was more than a billion higher than the average of the quarterly EBITDA last year and 2% also up versus Q4 last year. So we're just pleased to note that it represents a record high. With that EBITDA, next chart please. Our telco core income at 7.5 billion, which is up 9%, is tracking well versus our 2021 guidance of 29 to 30 billion for the full year. Next chart. Just to show also some of the other items in our P&L, taking into account our share in the performance of Voyager, as well as some gain and dilution, the telco core, if you add Voyager, would still be a 15% up versus last year. Now, on a reported income basis, There are some one-off adjustments that are reflected in our Q1 numbers, which resulted in a reported income of 5.8 billion, slightly lower than the 5.9 billion last year. The largest one-time non-recurring item would be the amortization of our Sun trademark as a result of the rebranding exercise that we did with respect to Sun Cellular. Next chart, please. On the debt side, we had $4.6 billion of gross debt as of the end of March, net debt at $3.9 billion, which is just slightly up versus $3.8 billion as of year-end. Net debt to EBITDA ratio is at 2.09 times, which is something that we're still very comfortable with. Debt maturities, we've been able to term out our debt maturities such that 62% of our debts mature beyond 2025. Overall cost of debt remains quite healthy at 4.45%. In terms of our borrowing requirements for the year, we have a budget of 38 billion pesos of new borrowings. 20 billion has been signed up. For the balance of our funding requirements, we have more than enough of PESO bilateral facility proposals on hand. Next chart, please. CAPEX. For the first quarter, notwithstanding all the challenges around the lockdown restrictions, we were able to complete 20.7 billion of CAPEX investments in Q1. 16.1 billion of that is on the network IT side. 3.8 billion would be to support the last mile install requirements of our higher install requirements. We also highlight here the various targets we have set for ourselves in terms of rollout for 5G base stations, 4G base stations, fiber ports, and fiber kilometers, 2021 targets, and then the items or the amounts that we have been able to complete in Q1. Our guidance for the year remains at 88 to 92 billion in terms of our CAPEX investments for 2021. Moving on to the next chart, we show here a scorecard of some of our network highlights. On the fixed line side, we have now hit 10.2 million homes passed for our fixed network. In terms of total ports, that's close to 4.4 million ports with an addition of 330,000 ports in the first quarter, so well on track for our 1.7 million ports addition in 2021. Available parts for sale are 1.7. In terms of fiber footprint, 478,000 kilometers, adding close to 50,000 kilometers during the first three months alone. On the wireless side, total base stations count of 63.6 thousand. For 5G alone, that's already over 3,200 on 2,600 sites, as mentioned earlier. 4G LTE, we continue to push for more 4G coverage, so we are close to 32,000 base stations on 4G alone. Overall, we cover 96% of the country's population through our wireless network. In terms of the devices we see, now 76% Thank you, Annabel, and good afternoon to all of you. Hello.

Yes, boss, we can hear you.

Thank you. In terms of revenue for the full year 2021, we anticipate that revenue will grow in the high single-digit revenues overall. And that assumes a fair part of the major part of the year 2021 will be more or less under lockdown conditions. We're seeing good growth in April and in May, the first week of May, and in fact, trending towards a low double-digit growth for the second quarter. So it depends on how the government will relax restrictions in the second half of this year in terms of its effect on our revenue growth for the full year. The most encouraging growth is coming from the home broadband, as Amabel indicated, that grew by about 19% for the first quarter, and it's likely to continue in the high double-digit number around 19% to 20% for the full year. There's a bit of a headwind on the wireless side, although momentum will be sustained on the wireless side at high single digit for the full year. The enterprise is challenged, but we're seeing growth in our data centers and in the hyperscalers side of the business. CapEx guiding towards around 90 billion, 88 to 92 billion, no change there. Telco Core, 29 to 30 billion, albeit I think the trend is moving towards, or the bias moving more towards the higher, Thank you very much.

So we're now ready to take your questions. You may type in your questions by clicking on the Q&A panel on the upper right-hand side of your screen. Kindly indicate your company and name, and we will read out your questions. The first set of questions comes from Bern of Atram. Congratulations on the earnings. I have a few questions. I'll read the questions one by one so that we can get to them before we tackle the next question. The press release stated that PLDT home total upgrades and installations in March 2021 Hit 129,000. Would just like to ask, what's the split between upgrades and installations?

About 110,000 of that is NewConnect and then the balance.

So it's mainly NewConnect, mainly NewConnect.

And then she says, this is for fixed broadband and does not include wireless, question mark.

Yes. Yes, it's just fixed broadband, no fixed.

and a related question. How is the trend of applications and installations for fixed broadband so far in April?

I think in terms of demand, demand remains to be very, very strong. Our connection in April, I think we will surpass 230,000 installations for the month of April. So we've actually, as I said earlier, we've increased our capacity to install A little over three times from the same period last year. And we will continue to improve that.

Do we have a target for Homes Passed for 2021?

We do, but not sure we want to say that publicly.

We have stated our target more in terms of the number of ports that we will build on.

And then she asks, what have you heard on the ground about DITO?

In terms of, I guess we know that they want to launch also in Luzon after the launch in Cebu and Davao. but maybe those questions are best for DITO to answer but what we're hearing from the ground is of course they're also establishing their presence in these areas but at the same time I think initially they had an offer of unlimited until the end month of April as an initial offer to its customers but they've actually retracted that starting mid-April and they have stopped the unlimited offers. That tells a lot in terms of what's happening to them. I think they initially started with very high speeds in their service but dropped rapidly as they had customers in their systems. That's why I think our hunch is that's why they had to stop their unlimited offers.

There's another broadband related question. When does PLDT expect churn on fixed broadband to ease?

I think it's starting to do that, Al. Yes.

Yes, our churn in the fourth quarter last year was slightly above 2%. I think what we've seen, at least for March and April, it's at the 1.5 level. Our budget is actually 2%, but that has come down also with a lot of effort. Thank you very much. and we continue to push the higher plans. I don't know, Jeremiah, if you want to add a few more things on that one.

I think I probably just to add to that one, Al, is really talking about the continuation of our copper to fiber migration, right? So copper to fiber migration we announced in August last year, which was moving our ADSL customers to fiber as quickly as we possibly can. So we saw actually that that program has kicked off in a big way this year. and we've been able to do 53,000 of those migrations through for the first quarter. Our intention is to ramp that up and actually move over as many of those customers as we possibly can, as quickly as we can. So I think all of those things together combine to help bring down the churn level. I think as you pointed out, our quarter one churn level is below quarter four of last year. We're seeing the trajectory continue through the second quarter as well.

I think just as a final point on ADSL, I think most of it, if not all, and maybe it might spill over sometime in January, but we're hoping that all 500,000 plus ADSL subscribers are already on Fiber by the end of the year.

You mean January 2022?

January 2022.

Yeah, almost all of the ADSL would have either migrated or churned out, right, by

There's a question for Ms. ALC. When will adjustments from the retroactive application of the CREATE bill for the second half of 2020 be factored into earnings and how much would this be?

We already included that in the first quarter report. So that was one of the items that was an adjustment between our telco core and reported income. So the net effect of last year's retroactive application is a net of 110,000. That's really actually a positive impact in terms of the reduction of actual tax paid by about $500,000. The next set of questions comes from Miguel Sevidal of BPI Securities.

IPLDT team, congratulations for another strong set of results. Two questions for me. Number one, may we ask for the split of the 2.4 million fixed-line broadband subscribers between Fiber and DSL? and would it be fair to attribute the bulk of the Quarto on Quarto ARPO improvement to the DSL to fiber upgrades or are you also seeing some upgrading to higher value plans within your fiber subscriber base? That's the first question.

I think it's both. There are also some upgrades from existing subscribers. In fact, there's a program that Jeremiah and the home team have established to exactly do that, just upgrade. I think there's about 120,000 that upgraded in this first quarter alone into higher plans. And as we mentioned earlier, I think the bulk of the new installs are new customers, so that's an uplift. For copper, what's the question, Melissa, on ADSL?

Whether the increase in our ARPUs are due to the migration from copper to ADSL or whether we're seeing higher top-ups or I guess higher ARPU from the existing fiber subscriber.

It's both, but I'm not sure about the ratio, Jeremiah. Do you know which one is...

Sure. If it's okay, I'll just jump in. I think what we're seeing in the market is obviously with everyone spending more and more time at home, right? Needing to both study, not just to study, but also work as well as play from home. The demand for bandwidth has actually increased quite a lot. And that demand is actually showing itself on two fronts. New customer acquisition. So as customers actually come on board, they're starting to want higher and higher plans. So we are seeing an uplift in our acquisition output. Thank you very much. The second question. In the previous earnings call, management mentioned that the goal was to secure common tower agreements for 95%

of the planned cell tower builds. May we ask for an update on the new cell tower builds so far and if the new common tower agreements have been signed? Thank you.

Yeah, we've actually signed up with 10 common tower partners and we've actually had an initial almost 1,000 towers that we're already piloting with them. and that's an ongoing project for our network to build. So yes, we have engaged.

The next set of questions come from Arthur Pineda of Citi. Can we clarify why mobile data has jumped with fixed wireless broadband? Was this classified under a different segment previously? And secondly, it seems that mobile revenue is just slightly lower quarter-in-quarter. Is this just a seasonal factor? Are there other factors such as competition or weaker public consumption at play? Thank you.

Jane, do you want to pick that up, Jane?

Yes, sir. There is definitely some seasonal impact there. But in general, what we see are subscribers, particularly from the low to mid segments, economizing. We have a significant growth in our value brand, T&T. and that is actually really showing signs of more than double-digit growth on a year-on-year basis. Subscribers are also latching on to a lot of our promotions. We just ended with Giga Mania and in that particular promo, we did offer a lot of really good deals and freebies for customers. In addition, we have observed A shift in traffic from mobile to Wi-Fi home solutions. So there's an offloading that's happening. And we see less network traffic over multiple cell sites, indicating that there's really less mobility. And therefore, the consumption for the mobile service is actually a little bit challenged. But it is still a good growth on a year-on-year basis. It's an 8% growth. And We are seeing some improvements in the second quarter, particularly in the latter parts of April and in the early parts of May. So we are hoping that our second quarter will be significantly better than our first quarter.

So the next question is from Jonte, and it's similar to the question that Jane just responded to, but I'll read it anyway. Hi, congrats on the strong fixed numbers. A few questions on mobile. I understand the lockdown is part of this, but both net ads, particularly on Smart and ARPU, were softer. Any more color, particularly on the competitive front?

Sir, may I answer that? In terms of subscriber numbers, we do see a softening on the top-line subscriber figures. But the more important metric that we actually monitor is VLR in SWE and SWR. So that's subs with events and subs with reload because those are the subscribers that actually give us our revenues. And it is worth noting that that's actually pretty stable. Double-digit growth on a year-on-year basis, but on a month-on-month basis, there's a slight softening on SWR. In terms of competition, we It's too early to say whether DITO is impacting the business. In fact, in the two areas that DITO launched their service in March, which is Cebu and Davao, we're actually seeing some growths. So we really do think that this is really due to the economic environment, both micro and macro factors, and people are really just tightening their belts at this time.

A follow-up question from John. There were more promotional activities like more data for the same price. Do you think this encouraged spin-downs?

Well, actually, we did launch the Double Giga sometime in April. This was really because we wanted to strengthen the brand in anticipation of the launch of Ditto, their expansion in Luzon and NCR this year. What we are very proud of is we're actually not competing on price. If you notice, competition has brought down their price points, even pushing 10 peso per day price points. That is the same for DITO pushing unlimited at sub 200 peso level. We're not doing that. What we are doing is we're trying to upsell and in doing so actually giving more benefits in terms of better data inclusions. And I think it's been successful so far because we've managed to actually protect our basket size. So in the middle of this economic health challenge and competitive challenges on a basket size area, we've actually managed to increase it.

I guess if I summarize that really, a stronger network and stronger marketing programs.

Yes, we are fighting it out on the marketing space and not on the pricing space.

The next question is from Ranjan Sharma of JP Morgan. How is PLDT monetizing 5G investments? Are there any 5G plans? And how do ARPUs of 5G compare to 4G?

Jane, you have the data there.

Okay. Well, we were able to get permission from senior management to roll out 5G only, I think, in the first quarter of last year. Thank you very much. We won't be able to scale with that one, but when we create a balance between 5G coverage and affordable handsets, then we should be able to see 5G contributing more to our revenues.

Next question is on Voyager. What are the capital requirements of Voyager?

Is DOI online?

Hi, MVP, Paolo's online.

Okay, you want to answer that, Paulo?

Sure, so in terms of capital requirements from existing investors, we had a round of investment last year in May, I believe, in May 2020. There was a follow-on on that right now, effectively, on this quarter, which is shoring up our finances. That looks to be keeping us busy for the next few months. So the capital requirements for Voyager at this point are on hold, and that should keep us busy again for the next few months, probably into next year. In terms of the way that the team has been performing, we can answer that separately.

There was an email question. Considering the breakthrough levels of installs that have been achieved, how much more do you expect to install in the coming months.

This is for fixed broadband.

Yes, sir.

Okay, thank you, Al. Look, I think we have talked about the increase in our installs that we've been able to achieve in the first quarter. The demand remains very, very strong in the marketplace. So one of the things we want to do is continue to actually increase that capacity as fast as we can. Where that ends up, really, it's going to come down to how many resources are available in the marketplace, some of the efficiencies we're looking to build into with our processes and being able to install customers faster. But it's our intention to try and actually lift that up as high as we possibly can for the remainder of the year. We talked at the beginning of the year about having quite an aggressive rollout program of 1.7 million ports. And a key part of making sure that we can secure further CAPEX is making sure that we utilize as many of those ports as fast as we can. So it's our intention in HOME to continue the momentum that we've had in the first quarter to ramp up that installation capacity more and more.

And the way we measure it or get an indication of how strong the demand is, is that the service orders or the orders, the applications, Jeremiah, are significantly ahead of our actual installs, gross installs, right, for a fixed broadband. So it's above, way above what we have so far been installing on a gross basis.

And to further to your point, Manny, I mean, we are in a situation where we have customers that have been waiting, some customers that wait for quite a while before they can get a PLDT service. It's absolutely our commitment to shorten that wait, right? And we want to serve as many of those customers as we possibly can. So we need to really lift up and ramp up that installation capacity. Yes.

Okay, thank you. The next question, what is the current overall Network Backbone Capacity of PLDT.

Sorry, Melissa, we lost you for a bit.

What is the current overall network backbone capacity of PLDT?

Is Mar here? Mar Tamayo?

Mar or Jorn?

Or Jorn? Yeah.

Mar, go ahead. Yeah. The question is about backbone capacity, if I get it right. Yeah, right now we have 478,000 kilometers of fiber. That's the backbone capacity that we have.

An emailed question. What is the target GTV of Voyager for 2021?

Well, I said earlier, Paulo, you want to answer that? Because I was just about to quote Doy. He said it's at least a trillion, right? A trillion DTD for 2021.

That's correct. That's correct. There hasn't been a firm figure that we've come out publicly with, but it'll be at least a trillion.

And then there was a question, I guess, following Jeremiah's response earlier. Have you seen an improvement in waiting time for service to be delivered from the time of call?

If I may, Al? Yes, please. So we have seen an improvement in terms of waiting time on two fronts. Really, there are two reasons why mainly customers call us. One is follow up to applications. and the second one is follow-up to repairs or whenever they've got service interruption. I can share with you obviously as we ramp up our installation capacity and you know Annabel mentioned it that it hit total installations in March of just shy of 130,000. As we ramp that up it means there are less and less customers that are actually waiting for that installation to happen. right so we are seeing that those installation wait times are actually shortening however having said that though despite the ramp up we still do have a significant number of customers app customer applications our SO levels are still you know much higher than our ability to install so there is still a segment of the market that we have not been able to get to and that's why we absolutely want to be able to continue to ramp up our installation capacity so that customers don't have to continue to wait on the second front sorry

Go ahead, go ahead.

Just going to mention on the second front, really around service interruptions and repairs. There's actually been a very, very strong focus into ensuring that customer repairs are being dealt with as quickly as we possibly can. We've seen that actually start to bear fruit and it starts to bear fruit because we've been able to get to we've increased our capacity to repair and that's reduced the number of customers actually waiting for repairs on any given day. That number's come down to a point now that most customer inquiries or customer issues are actually being dealt with within 48 hours. Now that's a significant improvement to what we've had in the past. It's our intention to continue and improve on that, right? That's really not where we want to be. We want to be even faster than that. But it is actually a huge improvement to what we've had in the past. Now, that's not to say that everybody's being dealt with immediately. It will really depend on what the customer issues are. And there are times when that may take a little bit longer. What I'm sharing with you is the vast majority of customers that do have an issue. We are actually able to tend to those issues within 48 hours.

Our aspirations, there's still so much we can do, that's why we have a lot of projects to automate all of our process, moving to self-care as far as customers are concerned. Of course, it's a journey that we're embarking on, but To the point of Jeremiah, I think at the end of the day, I feel customers still want the PLDT service. It's really just our ability to fulfill those orders. And that's why our aspiration for installation is actually within the day and repairs within four hours. That's our aspiration today. We're not there yet, obviously, but that's something that we're striving for.

And then there's an email question on enterprise. You speak about hyperscaler opportunity. Could you give some color regarding this?

Jovi, do you want to pick it up?

Thank you, Basel. Yeah, so the hyperscaler market is a new market that we're looking at. When you talk about hyperscalers, these are the very large cloud companies globally. So I'm sure all of you would know the usual names. Some of them are existing customers already. But when we compare the way they put their facilities in a specific country and when we compare ourselves to Southeast Asia, they have been more active in putting their availability zones, as we call it, putting their servers in our neighboring countries. And because of some of the geopolitical issues that abound and some The Philippines is becoming very quickly a very viable option for these global hyperscalers and that's something that we really want to pursue. That's why our chairman alluded to the fact that this might become the next BPO industry also. It's going to be, you know, it's not going to be easy. We have to work with government, but I think we have the right formula with the BPO company. So we did it a decade ago. And we think that there's going to be a very big upside in the hyperscaler market, not only for revenues, but for the country as well.

And then there's a question on our new endorsers. What is the impact to the business of the new Korean endorsers and now the Thay endorsers?

Well, let me talk about the more recent international endorsers that we introduced and that's BTS, right? We introduced them to the market last April 22. And without going into specifics, I will say that in the fourth week of April versus the third week of April, we did see some growths already and this growth continues on in the first five days of May. And BTS in particular is actually endorsing the BrandSmart prepaid and for the first time in many months, it's actually outpacing TNT in terms of activations. So I think I can conclude that it's a good investment and we will continue to maximize the investment for the business.

I think if you may add to that, and Jane knows this, I think it's really building affinity to the brand. And I think, you know, I mean, for the longest time, we've been wanting to target the youth. The youth being, you know, will be a long-term customer for us. And we're addressing their passions. We're being part of their lives. And I think that's something that we're pushing for. Affinity to the brand. It's something that we know our youth wants today. Maybe we can ask our CFO, Annabelle, who has watched thousands of Korean dramas, I'm told.

The reality is right now, the center and the heart of pop culture, not just here in the Philippines, but globally, is the K-wave. That is the reality, right? That's why in the Philippines, there's a lot of following for K-pop, K-drama, K-food, all kinds of K. Even Filipinos are learning the K language. So this is essentially us putting our brand at the heart of this pop culture. And I think that's a wise thing to do.

And I think it speaks a lot about not only the brand, but the company, PLDT Smart, where you have global companies like BTS, global brand themselves, and Chris Evans to be associated with PLDT Smart. I think that says a lot about parallel aspirations for not only the companies that we run, but also with our endorsers.

All right, that was the last question that we got and there's no question in the Q&A queue. So if there are no further questions, we just want to inform everyone that the podcast of this briefing will be available on our website after the call. We now turn the floor over back to Mr. Pangilinan for his closing remarks.

Well, I would simply like to say thank you to all of you for joining us this afternoon. We're already midway in the second quarter, and I think we release our first half results sometime early August. So we look forward to even better numbers for the first half. And right, Al?

Yes, sir. Charging forward.

And we look forward to meeting you again. Thank you for joining us this afternoon. Stay safe. Bye. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.