PLDT Inc.

www.pldt.com under the Investor Relations section. Kindly note that this briefing is being recorded. A podcast of this event will be available on our website after the call. QR code for the presentation is on the screen, and the MD&A, FS, and podcast will be made available after the call. For today's presentation, we have with us Mr. Alphan Liljo, President and CEO of PLDT and SMART, Mr. Danny Yu, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Risk Officer, Attorney Marilyn Aquino, our Corporate Secretary and Chief Legal Counsel, Mr. Shailesh Baidwan, President of Maya Philippines and Co-Founder of Maya Bank, as well as other members of the PLDT Management Team. At this point, let me turn the floor over to Mr. Panlilio to begin the presentation.

Thank you, Melissa. Good afternoon to all and thank you for joining us this afternoon. I'd like to start off the presentation a few highlights of the business and then i'll pass it on to danny for a more needed financial highlights report and then yes people for mine you have this life will you say you have this right yes sorry about that

Okay.

Happy to report our first nine months performance for PLDP Smart. Growth has made possible nine months 2020 performance. To start with, we have 142.3 billion for 1% growth in revenues, which is another nine month high revenues for PLDP. We also had an all-time nine-month high for our EBITDA, $78.4 billion, plus $4 billion for the same period of last year. Able to maintain our margin at a 52% EBITDA margin. Telco Core has shown growth also, plus $2 billion, $26.1 billion for the period. And we also want to share the CapEx we managed down to $55.3 billion. versus 67.3 billion of same period last year. So because of that, the impact intensity gone down to 37% from a high of about 46% last year. Next page. So we continue to expand our network countrywide. We improved, we increased our fiber footprint, domestic fiber footprint by 4%. That's now up to almost 894,000 kilometers. And if you add the fiber optic backbone of our subsea, it's about 1.1 million kilometers of fiber. Home space is 17.31 million, up from 16.78 last year. and also happy to report that there are now more devices latched on to our network, positive 74% growth. Now we have 3.64 million who are latched on 5G devices in our network. Jupiter cable system, which we launched last year, was also, we have 10 certification for ISO 22301 BCMS. And just an update on the tower sales, that we started about a year and a half ago, two years ago. We closed 1,319 towers as of November 3, generating proceeds of about $7.4 billion. And in total, from the first sale that we have, we've already completed a total of over 5,984 towers equivalent to almost $7.8 billion. Next page, please. Happy to report also, next page. recognition that we've gotten as a group of both locally and globally. Umlat has rated smart as the best in test, both upload speeds, download speeds, and latency experience, and has been a consistent winner since 2019. Time magazine actually also put PLDT as the only Philippine telco And it's ranked highest in sustainability among six-sided Philippine companies recently. And we continue to also get awards in terms of governance initiatives, scorecards, and recognitions, which recognize PLDP upholding high standards of corporate governance. Next page. Our three business units continue to push for growth through innovation, smart. We continue to empower digital lifestyles through exciting personalized offers. And we have Alex here today who can answer your questions on what's in store for our list customers. And by the way, we have now the highest in terms of sub-base, 55.2 million subscribers now on smart. and P&T being the number one pre-paid brand in the country. Purity Home, Jeremiah is here. He can also share with you some of the plans in keeping families safe, connected, productive, and entertained. Both offers on fiber and fixed wireless products that he has launched in the market. And P&T Enterprise, both Mitch Locsin and Evo Hedrino are here ensuring that we're able to provide innovative solutions for the digital transformation of the industries that we cover, both large companies and all sorts of things. Next page, please. Next page. So staying true to our company's core on sustainability, we did put... You know, we had a digital convention held last October called Vision. And part of that, as part of those discussions in the digital hub was about sustainability, in-depth discussions on sustainability and the programs that we have embarked as PLGT. In fact, we had a school in Nepal turnover with Jessup Corner at the ICP Sec Ivan during that time. And we also implemented e-waste collection stations for delegates. Same with the second pillar here where we put it in our businesses where we're collecting old phones, chargers, devices, modems to properly dispose of this equipment. And in fact, us in FIBA, we did an initiative for sustainability where we collected PET bottles plastic bottles that we want to also dispose of. Next page. Our push for nation building through public and private collaboration remains to be strong. PLT Group joined the call for the creation of a connectivity index rating through PSAC to elevate internet quality in the country. These are great buildings for customers and for people to be able to raise buildings. We also partnered with Maya, back with the GDP and DPI Cashless Expo 2023, which is happening this month. And during also the Digicon, we launched the first ever for Sovereign Cloud with the ICT, the fast strategic transformation of the country's public sector. But this should also be used, obviously, by private sector as soon as the IRR or the guidelines have been implemented. Next page, please. Our PLD Smart Foundation remains to be very busy in serving our communities. Just to highlight, allowed for all of the public health initiatives by the First Lady, supported not only by PLDT, but also by a group of companies, others that we continue to push. Next page. So, at this point, we will continue to innovate tomorrow and but we start patients today and we will continue to push this last quarter to make sure that we're able to end the year at a time so at this point i'd like to move the presentation to danny for more details thank you good afternoon everyone i'll be presenting the financial and operating highlights for the first nine months of 2023

Service revenues of $142.3 billion for the first nine months of 2023 were higher by 1% compared to the same period last year. On gross basis, service revenues of $149.8 billion were up 3% from $145.7 billion in 2022. Operating expenses decreased by 3% from $1.7 billion to $63.9 billion. consolidated EBITDA rose by 4% to 78.4 billion, an all-time nine-month high with EBITDA margin at 52%. Telco core income, excluding the impact of asset sales and Maya, grew to 26.1 billion, up 2% year-on-year. Next, please. On segment basis, revenue growth was broad-based. Individual revenues representing about 43% of consolidated revenues rose 1% to 60.6 billion. Record highs were registered in the home and enterprise segments. Home revenues rose 2% to 45.3 billion, with fiber-only revenues having a recent 10% to 39.3 billion. Home revenues Our enterprise business grew by 1% to $34.8 billion. Let me now go through the segments in greater detail. Next, please. Home broadband revenues grew by 2%. Fiber-only revenues, which now account for 87% of total home revenues, were higher by 10% or $3.6 billion compared to the same period last year. As a result of higher gross installation plus migration and erosion, fiber net ads accelerated in the third quarter with 88,000 compared to 42,000 in the second quarter, bringing the total net ads for the year to 210,000. The growth of our fiber-only revenues the sequential albeit modest improvement of revenues from our fixed wireless broadband business underscore our view that the home broadband market remains under penetrated with unserved demand more at the lower market segments thus more sensitive to price unique to pldt is the ability to complement our fiber offer with others at different price points using varied fixed and wireless technologies to address market affordability. ELDT continues to enjoy strong brand equity and superior network quality, making it a formidable competitor in the market. Next, please. Data and ICT remain the key drivers of our enterprise business, which registered a revenue increase of 1% to $34.8 billion from the same period last year, with third-quarter revenues up by 2%. Corporate data grew by 6% due to higher fiber, managed IT, and IGATE revenues. EPLDT recorded a 10% increase in revenues, mainly from data center and cloud services. With the Santa Rosa data center capacity expected to come on stream ahead of competition in the first half of 2024, EPLDT is well positioned to capture the robust demand from hyperscalers. In addition, our road pipeline is fueled by our enterprise team's focus on enabling digital transformation initiatives of corporate SMEs and governments, including the creation of smart cities and the first sovereign cloud. Next, please. Positive trends are also manifesting in the individual segment, which has faced various challenges over the years. Revenue for our individual business rose by 1% in the first nine months of the year. In the third quarter, which is historically low, revenues were higher by 100 million versus the second quarter, and 400 million higher than the same quarter in 2022. A 2% and 6% growth in prepaid and postpaid revenues in the third quarter supported year-to-date revenue improvements compared to last year. Mobile data revenues jumped 5% to 52.4 billion with active data users of almost 38 million and following a 15% rise in data traffic. Average monthly data usage per customer escalated to 10.8 gigabytes, up by 23% from last year and 17% from full year 2022. While the industry availments of number portability remain small, since the implementation of MNP in 2020, the majority of customers that ported their numbers moved to smart, reflecting recognitions of PLDT's network advantage. Next, please. In the first nine months of 2023, 82% of our consolidated service revenues were from data and broadband by service type, Mobile data rose by 3% year-on-year, while home broadband and corporate data grew by 4% and 6%, respectively. ICT revenues were up 10%, including an 8% rise in data center revenues. A broad-based cost management effort was undertaken, resulting in a 3% or 1.7 billion drop in total expenses, including provisions and subsidies. The combined impact of increase in revenues and decline in costs is a 4% rise in consolidated EBITDA to 78.4 billion, a nine month record high with margin at 52%. Next please. Telco core income for the period grew by 2% to 26.1 billion, year on year reflecting the impact of higher EBITDA partly offset by higher depreciation higher financing costs and higher tax provision telco core for the third quarter is stable compared to the same quarter last year on reported basis PLDT income grew by one percent to 27.9 billion mainly from the gain from the tower sale and listback transactions, Forex and derivative gains, partly offset by MRP costs. Note that our share in losses from Maya stood at $1.7 billion, lower than the $2.4 billion reported last year. This moderation in losses is in line with the expectation of break-even and profitability towards the end of 2024. Next please. PLDT's balance sheet remains healthy with net debt to EBITDA at the end of September at 2.44 times lower than the 2.48 times at the end of June. We expect this to further improve with the receipt of the remaining tower sales proceeds. Gross debt amounted to $274.5 billion, of which 15% are dollar-denominated and 5% unhedged. Interest costs for the period stood at $4.49 pre-tax, while the average life of debt is 6.7 years. Next, please. Total CAPEX for nine months amounted to 55.3 billion, consisting of network and IT CAPEX of 49.4 billion and business CAPEX of 6 billion. In line with our objective of bringing down CAPEX and aiming for positive free cash flow, CAPEX intensity for the period has fallen below the 40% mark to 37%, and is lower than the 46% recorded last year. In addition, the CAPEX of 55.3 billion is 23.1 billion lower than EBITDA for the period of 78.4 billion. We maintain our CAPEX guidance for the year of between 80 and 85 billion. This includes approximately about 11 billion out of the 33 billion prior year's commitment. We continue to tightly screen and closely monitor our CAPEX, especially multiyear projects, as well as introduce end-to-end process improvements in the value chain, covering plan to budget approval, procure to pay, build to provision, and related record to report. Next page, please. This page shows the usual network highlights. On the fixed network, we passed 17.3 million homes and cover about 18,100 barangays representing 43% of the total barangays in the Philippines. Total fiber ports grew to 1 to 6.2 million as we have accelerated port rollout. We continue to carefully rationalize the rollout of new ports to ensure optimal utilization. PLET total fiber footprint remains unparalleled with a total of over 1.1 million kilometers. Population coverage of our wireless network stands at 97%. About 82% of the total handsets on the network are LTE or 4G. Next page, please. The number of unique 5G devices and 5G data traffic continue to register improvements from the end of 2022. As part of our network optimization to realize operational, CAPEX, and spectrum efficiencies, we reduced the number of our 5G base stations. Nevertheless, our 5G speed remained faster than that of competition based on OCLAS speed test.

Thank you, Danny. So in 2023, we continue to push the boundaries of our FinTech ecosystem with Maya Digital Bank at the heart of it and continue to launch new products and growing all our businesses. So in the Philippines, we are the number one digital bank in terms of number of depositors and the deposit balance. And we continue to see very good growth across our loans portfolio. And I'll touch upon that on the merchant acquiring business, which is where we process Visa, MasterCard, QRPH, domestic debit. Again, we are the leaders in number of transactions processed in the Philippines across all these various fund sources and continue to see that market share expand. And we are the number one finance app in the Philippines, which is our Maya consumer app. But if we give a little more color across each of these, So if we look at on the Maya consumer app, which was largely a payment centric app and now has gone on and evolved into an all in one full financial service app for consumers. We introduced our high engagement saving product last year. Customers look forward at the start of the month to pay their electricity bill, their various utility bills, to do their various purchases, which then helps them to earn higher interest rate. And on the back of that information that we are able to collect on customers, we are able to create better profiles and deeper understanding of the behavior, which then goes into our credit scoring models and allows us to provide them with our credit products as and when they need those. Very pleased we launched our first credit product last year, Maya Credit. And last month, we expanded that with a longer-term product, Maya Personal Loans, And we've seen extremely positive take up of that in the early stages of its launch. We continue to expand our services by adding on investments. So now customers are able to purchase and invest in a number of funds. And we will add the ability to purchase individual stocks on the Philippine Stock Exchange over the coming weeks. So what this has enabled has really helped the Maya consumer app to become the all-in-one primary financial services app for the customers. And we are seeing them generating two to four times more ARPU and profit for user versus the payments only. We see the same story when we look in on an enterprise side of the business. This is a business where we provide whether you're a large online player, an omni-channel player, providing you with a full suite of payment solutions, including whether it's just for QR or whether it's Visa, MasterCard, or any other fund source, including domestic debit. As I mentioned, our share in number of transactions today in this business is over 50% across Visa, MasterCard, QRPH. That's our market. And with the addition of Maya Bank, we've now been able to integrate the ability for merchants, especially the SME, the MSMEs, to be able to use Maya Bank deposit to put their settlement account. And we have now started testing and piloting credit products to both micro and to small SMEs. So in the same portal where they do all the transactions for payments, they're now able to draw down on credit on working capital products, which we are able to provide on the back of seeing their payment transactions and business flows. So this is another area where we have piloted a number of products and are now scaling those and rolling those out through the course of the rest of 2023. And if you go to the next slide, to give you some color on the numbers, the number of depositors that we have in Maya Bank grew to 2.6 million. In fact, as of now, the number is very much close to 3 million depositors. And that has resulted in us having a deposit balance of nearly 24 billion pesos. We have been, as I mentioned, we started with disposing consumer loans, adding on newer products for consumers, and of course, adding on our micro and SME products. We have disbursed over 16 billion pesos of loans in the last 12 months. And as a result of this expansion and the Maya, both the business on the enterprise side and on the consumer side, becoming key drivers. We've seen our segment across the businesses become profitable in the third quarter of 2023. And as Danny mentioned, thanks to that, not only have we been able to grow more than double our net income year on year, but we've been able to bring down a cash burn by nearly 40% versus last year. And with the expansion that we are seeing in the business with the continued growth in the net income as we launch new product and scale new products, we are looking and making the business cash flow positive towards the end of 2024. With that, I'm going to hand this back to Al. Thank you.

Thank you, SB. I don't think I'll be pitched online. I just wanted to give the outlook guidance for 2023. Service revenue growth, low single-digit growth for the group. EBITDA will also be low single-digit growth. The core income will be at least $24 billion. We're looking at between $8 to $85 billion compared to 1997 last year. And we will try to, we will continue, obviously, our dividends. Sorry, MPP is here. MPP. Right.

Go ahead.

Go ahead, Al. Go ahead. And then for dividends, we will obviously try to maintain the 60% dividend tail. MPP, if you might want to add a few things.

No, I'm good, Al. Thank you. Thank you.

At this point, we're now ready to take your questions. You may type your questions in the Q&A box in the upper right side of the screen. You may also click the raise hand button and wait for your name to be called before you unmute your microphone. You may also send your questions via email to PLDT underscore IR underscore center at PLDT.com.ph. Please indicate your name and company name so we can get back to you for any additional information that you may need. The first set of questions comes from Stephen Oliveros of China Bank Securities. The first one, how does Dell plan to sustain its top line momentum in 2024, given protracted period of elevated interest rates and inflation?

I guess to start with, I think we haven't finalized our budget for next year, but obviously we're going to target growth for our revenue line. For example, some of the initiatives that will be on stream next year will be our 11th data center, which will be on stream by June of next year. So we will have the six-month benefit of that and hopefully full year in the following year. I think we're showing positive momentum on mobile and we continue to grow that. There's still some growth areas still in home. that we are also pursuing, although Danny did say that it's starting to get to be the financial challenge market, a segment of the market. That's why I think the ability of home to offer both fiber and fixed wireless solutions will be helpful in that push. And I know that enterprise continues to push digital transformation across the enterprise space of customers. No wonder you want to add

Next question, how does Maya Bank plan to strike a balance between funding costs and interest income given the attractive deposit rates you're currently offering?

Yes, we absolutely are trying to strike a balance and see a deliberate effort on our part is making sure that the customers where it's high engagement banking see a growth in both the customers and deposit balances over there, which is where we get a lot of rich information on the customers. And these are customers who for certain periods of time have positive balances, but also have over a period of time need access to credit. And by virtue of seeing the transaction behavior, we are able to score them and provide them with Maya credit. And that piece has worked really well. What we did see was that we had balances in our personal goals product, which was a time deposit equivalent product, And in that, we had some customers with high balances because of the interest rate. What we have done is we are reworking that product. And as a result of that, we have seen some reduction in the balances on that product. So if you look at a performance quarter on quarter, the number of customers that we have in Maya Bank has actually gone up. But the amount of deposit balance has actually stayed pretty much flat. So that's helped us. And the second is, of course, growing the loan book. At this stage, as I mentioned, we have disbursed over 16 billion pesos of loan. These are largely short tenor loans. So as a result, of course, our outstanding loan book is modest. But as we expand into longer tenor roles, as I mentioned, personal loans, SME loans, we will also start seeing our loan to deposit ratio go up. So we've had a deliberate strategy of making sure that we're growing the number of customers that we have. We are getting the transaction behavior and payment behaviors, which is helping us. And that helps us with high engagement banking, but we're very conscious of making sure that we're not, you know, this state getting encumbered with high balance deposits at high interest rates. And that's what we have pretty much worked on over the course of the last couple of quarters and continue to refine that.

There's a raised hand, Arthur.

Hi, can you hear me?

Yes, we can.

Yeah, thanks for the opportunity. Several questions, please. Firstly, on mobile, I'm just wondering what can be done to address the revenue growth caps versus your competitor? Now, PLDT has had the benefit of network upgrades for quite a while now with the network advantages being claimed. What are the challenges in taking the premium users away from your competitor? Second question I had is with regard to the data center. Can we get some idea on the expected contributions from this? You've mentioned contributions or commercialization by early 2024. How much can this generate into the year? And is this immediately profitable, or is there a ramp-up phase needed with utilization? And final question comes back to mobile. I'm just wondering, what does it take to get industry revenue growth tracking alongside broader GDP growth? When you look at other markets in Asia, it seems to be tracking well. Philippines seems to be an outlier. Basically, I'm just wondering what can be done so that you're back to mid-single digits.

I'll have Alex answer the mobile question now. So thank you for your question, Patrick.

Yes, we're looking at growth for 2024, riding on the restart of our network function, as well as the delivery of platform capabilities that will allow us to deploy targeted, customized, and very timely offers that are indeed relevant and value-packed. Obviously, there's a skewed towards our customers on postpaid business, we realized that we have work to do there in order to not just upsell, but also to encourage even greater acquisition through switching. Of course, we'll have to bank on the strength of the network. We have been looking at improvements in terms of speed, as well as quality. And we also continue to work on our indoor coverage. where most of the mobile consumption has shifted, even as increased mobility has already been seen for the first few quarters of this year.

Yes, Arthur, I think if you look at the sub-numbers, we're ahead based on this third quarter reporting. We're at 55.2, as we said yesterday, at 54.7. So our task is how do we... The gap in revenues is something that we have to work on moving forward.

The third one was on data centers. The third one from my ball was in my ball. How do you get the instant revenue growth?

Well, the programs that we have lined up are geared towards accelerating mobile data burn. A number of our customers have continued to enjoy the better offers, but I think we have to see velocity. That's why the emphasis on faster burn, as well as understanding the segments which require a higher bandwidth allocations. And at the same time, the related offers that might be interesting for this target market, whether it involves fintech solutions or entertainment and the like.

Thank you, Alex. I'll ask B-Boy to answer the data center.

Yes. Thank you for the question on data centers. I think the advantage of the TLDT platform is we have available capacity. And secondly, we will be the first to market to actually have a hyperscale data center in the country. This is very advantageous for us because as companies and the public sector transform digitally, they're looking for co-location services to meet their digital infrastructure requirements. And we will be in the best position to capture most of this given those two factors of available capacity and the first to market with a hyperscaler data center by the middle of next year.

How soon can you monetize and profit?

Yeah, so if you look at the data center, obviously, it's like building a house that you need tenants. So we will need to find the tenants to fill it up. There will be a ramp-up phase. We are looking for an anchor tenant to fill up the space that we have. And the anchor tenants will come in the form of hyperscalers, eastern or western hyperscalers. And as soon as they ramp up, then it will be easier for us to monetize the co-location space that they've taken in our data center.

We have started selling the space, and I think we're very warm on a few big engagements with hyperscalers, one from the west, one from the east, or maybe two from the west. And that's something that we're really working hard on. So we want to make sure that we can fail it as soon as possible. In fact, what's available by June next year is 10 megawatts, but we're pushing for 10 by November. The early part of 2024 would be the balance 16 megawatts. The teams are pushing very hard to get contracted even prior to the completion of the data center in San Francisco. I hope, Arthur, we've answered your questions.

Thanks, Al. Just maybe to clarify, are there any plans to find any strategic partner which would help you accelerate take-up levels on your data centers?

We're undergoing a process now, in fact, we've shared it with the board, and we've actually had a very short list, and we're expecting some binding offers, hopefully by the latter part of November, just precisely, you know, exactly what you said, looking for a strategic partner that will grow the business and operate it more efficiently because of the experience of the partner that we want to bring in.

Understood. Thank you very much.

Thank you. The next question is on mobile. Have you seen any impact from DITO after it received fresh funding?

Well, there has been on-ground as well as online action from the challenger. Obviously, they will have to ride on marketing offers that will go with the expansion of the network, we understand that a number of customers either from our side or from the other competitor might be, if I may say, trying to experiment and understand, do they in fact merit being second seen inside our devices. uh we have seen you know from the marketplace that a number of customers have actually gone back to their primary service providers you know after understanding that the service more reliable more consistent and more predictable thanks there's a question what are your views on prepaid whole fraud yes sir thanks al so uh

First, before I answer the question on prepaid broadband, particularly prepaid fibre, I just want to remind everybody that PLDT is in a great position to be able to leverage two very, very strong networks. Our mobile network actually rated extremely high with platforming both 5G as well as 4G, which enables us to be able to sell fixed wireless as an offering to customers to be able to service not only areas that we don't have fibre, but to also service a different demographic of customer that may be looking for more of a sachet based sort of infrequent usage for various reasons. The second one is as our fiber network, which we have actually had quite an extensive rollout And we currently do enjoy about 60% utilization. So we actually have 60% of all of our ports tolling customers. So we have two weapons that we're able to leverage. Because of the situation that we're in, I guess we're approaching the market a little bit differently from competition. We've led our push into the prepaid space with fixed wireless. So we've actually seen fixed wireless as a category has been challenged in the market for the last nine months. But what we are very pleased to be able to report back is we've seen two consecutive quarters of growth in our fixed wireless space. So we've actually seen 5% quarter-on-quarter growth in terms of fixed wireless revenues. Now, whilst that may still be somewhat small compared to the, say, for example, fiber revenues, it does show that there is a role for fixed wireless to play in being able to service the different customer needs for the different segments. From a fibre perspective, we have actually, as we mentioned in the half-year results, we do have plans to go into the prepaid fibre space. In fact, we are currently trialling with some of our existing customers now a prepaid offering. The approach we are taking is much more measured approach though. We want to be very, very targeted with the areas that we make prepaid fiber available because we do currently enjoy the largest fiber base with a very, very high utilization rate. We want to make sure that prepaid fiber is something that's revenue accretive as opposed to revenue dilutive. We've seen through some of the other information released by the competition that the prepaid fiber ARPUs are significantly lower than postpaid ARPUs. So we want to make sure that We do prioritize where it is possible for our ports to be sold to postpaid customers where we get a higher yield and where we do have an abundance of prepaid. That's where we'll be using prepaid fiber. So, you know, to answer your question and maybe in a shorter way, we do think there is a role for prepaid fiber to actually play in the market. But we're not only dependent on prepaid fiber to be able to service that segment. We also have the benefit of also using fixed wireless to be able to attack that segment of the market.

next question is you mentioned about the launch of a sovereign cloud what are the potentials of this business and what is the traction so far thank you for that question um you know the when we built the sovereign cloud we really had target markets in mind one was really government services and the other one is the private sector we felt that as part of our role to help digitalize um the economy and help the administration also digitalize most of its public services. Building a sovereign cloud in the Philippines was a first step for us in being able to offer that solution. This is a service that is similarly implemented or rolled out in other markets. We are actually the sixth or the seventh market in Asia to be able to roll out a sovereign cloud. So we feel that there's going to be usage and traction for this. We cannot obviously say who the government agencies are, given the sensitivity of data that we will be hosting. But it has been a welcome solution for a need that government agencies have been looking for for quite some time.

Here's a question on Maya. Are there any plans for fundraising?

Yes, uh, we are very much, as I mentioned a couple of quick pointers to that, uh, the business actually, all the businesses became segmented with our positive. Third quarter of this year. And we continue to push towards the overall company becoming cash positive towards the end of 2024 in the interim, while we are funded on a lot of the operating side, as we expand our loan book, we do need access to capital for some of the regulatory capital and to blow the loans book. So we are concluding a funding round with the existing shareholders to fund for the requirements that we have till 2024. We should be able to conclude that over the coming days and should be able to share details.

I just wanted to add to that that PLDP will actually participate in that round and that will increase its equity and for specific increase equity in the buy-in.

There's a question on capex intensity. You've reduced your capex intensity significantly. How much lower can that go? And when do you expect it to get to the 25% level, similar to other stelfos in the region?

I'm not sure whether 25% is possible for us. But I think what initially we'd like to do is bring it down to 30%. That's a target maybe for next year or so.

There's a question on whether we're planning to do any more tower sales.

Right now, we want to just complete first what we have sold. There's still quite a bit of... We've done a lot. In my summary, I said that we had 5,904 towers. I think that we've already 5984 that we really closed 79 so it's only 79 80 so there's a bit there's still 20 that we need to close up we're hoping that we can place a big part of that big chunk of that within the year are there any other questions there's nothing in the queue please feel free to raise your hand or type your question in the chat box we see a hand raised

That's me.

You asked me the question. It works. It works. But maybe MBP can.

MBP, would you like to share some comments? There are no other questions in the queue.

Nothing significant. So better stay quiet like which I didn't in the media, right?

I think there's a question from Herman.

Herman, please unmute your mic.

Yeah, I'm okay. Yeah, I've unmuted. Can you hear me?

Yes, sir. Yes, you can.

Okay.

There's a question from Herman de la Paz. Herman. Also testing if there are.

No further questions.

Halloween special. No further questions, so turn the floor over to our chairman, Mr. Pangilinan, for any final notes.

Nothing really special by way of closing except to thank you for joining us this afternoon for the for the third quarter briefing, and we look forward to seeing you again, perhaps sometime in February or March next year. So in the meantime, on behalf of all of us, we wish all of you a very Merry Christmas.

Thank you. And that concludes today's briefing. As always, should you have any further questions or clarifications, please reach out to PLDP Investor Relations. Thank you for your participation.

Good afternoon. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, guys.