PLDT Inc.

I'm Jingay Nograles, Head of Investor Relations here at PLDT. It's my pleasure to welcome you to our first quarter financial and operations results briefing. Joining us today to share insights into PLDT's performance and strategic direction are Smart Communications Chief Operating Officer, Boyne Marguerite, PLDT Chief Operating Officer, Jimenez Jr., PLDT Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Danny Yu, PLDT Victorino Aquino, PLDT Chief Legal Counsel, Attorney Joan Davinesa-Cabo. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that we will have a Q&A session after the presentation. You may submit your questions via MS Teams Q&A panel, or you may also raise your hand and we will unmute you at that time. To start, I'd like to invite our CFO, Mr. Danny Liu, to walk us through PLDT's financial performance for the first quarter.

Good afternoon, everyone. Allow me to present PLET's first quarter performance covering key results and business highlights. Our net service revenue is slightly up year-on-year. On gross basis, our revenue reached $53.4 billion, up 2% from last year. EBITDA grew by 2% to $27.9 billion, driven by continued strength in our Fiverr and iTunes. with prudent cost management. Telco core income was recorded at $8.8 billion, down 6% year-on-year, reflecting increased depreciation linked to recent strategic investment in network infra, coupled with related financing costs. Core income was steady at $8.9 billion, driven by Maya's positive earning contribution as it turned profitable this quarter. As we move forward, we will continue to pursue steady revenue growth, disciplined expense management, asset monetization, and prevent capital allocation. OBT's net service revenue growth reflects stable demand across our key business segments, mobile data, fiber, corporate data, and ICT. Starting with home, revenue rose by 4% year-on-year to $15.2 billion thanks to continued Fiverr demand. Fiverr now accounts for 97% of home revenues, up from 92% in 2024 as we steadily migrate legacy subscribers. In enterprise, total revenue remained steady at $11.9 billion year-on-year, with a slight 1% uptick in corporate data and ICT revenues. Within this segment, ICT stands out, going 16% year-on-year to 2.2 billion, now accounting for over 22% of enterprise revenues, up from 19% a year ago. Although our connectivity business is navigating a transitional phase, we are actively building a pipeline of new opportunities by leveraging our emerging technologies. Lastly, on mobile, revenues were down slightly at 21.3 billion due to lower packet Wi-Fi usage as customers shifted to smartphone or fixed data access. Some prepared packages available in the first quarter of 2024 were also adjusted, leading to less headline growth but better fundamentals. We're also encouraged by rapid 5G adoption, and a steady rise in data traffic, which point towards improved monetization and growth moving forward. Mobile data, fiber, corporate data, and ICT, which now account for 89% of total revenues from 88% in 2024, continue to expand, offsetting legacy revenues declines. Excluding legacy services, net service revenues grew by 2%, Now, let's take a closer look at home segment. Home revenue rose 4% year-on-year, reaching $15.2 billion. This growth was mainly driven by fiber, which posted a healthy 7% increase to $14.7 billion. Our shift from legacy to fiber is progressing well, with fiber now representing 97% of total home revenues, up significantly from 92% in 2024. We also added 101,000 new subscribers this quarter compared to negative net additions a year ago. This improvement came from stronger network coverage and expanded port availability from recent investments. R2 remained stable at around 1,493, reflecting our success in bundling high-value products. while managing churn effectively. Our churn rate of less than 2% remains among the lowest in the industry. Looking ahead, we will continue to expand our fiber footprint with targeted initiatives and diversified offerings. Turning now to enterprise, the unit delivered steady results with total revenues at 11.9 billion. corporate data and ICT, on the other hand, improved by 1% to 8.8 billion. This growth was tempered by the impact of lost Pogo connectivity as the industry shut down last year. With that said, ICT business continues to perform well, growing at 16% compared to the same period last year. Managed IT services expanded 101%, cybersecurity services rose by 69%, credit scoring climbed by 48%, and data center co-location revenues jumped 37%. As a result, ICT now makes up over 22% of our enterprise revenues, going to 19% a year ago. We're working on new opportunities, leveraging our investments in advance. Hello, hello. centers network application programming and ai drivers additionally the recently activated asia directly further strengthens our competitive advantage enhancing international capacity and network resilience for enterprise customers turning to the individual segment Total revenues came in at 21.3 billion, down slightly by 1% year on year, as we continue to see customers shift away from packet Wi-Fi towards smartphone-based data usage. Mobile data revenues, on the other hand, were stable at 18.8 billion, impacted partially by the termination of long validity offers that front-loaded revenues in the first quarter of 2024. Despite relatively flat revenues, underlying trends remain encouraging. 5G data traffic surged 81% year on year. 5G device adoption also showed robust growth up 60% quarter on quarter. The ongoing shift to 5G has significantly improved our network efficiency and freed up additional LTE capacity resulting in a better overall customer experience. We expect this increased 5G adoption and improved network efficiency to help stabilize revenues and drive future growth in the individual segment. PLDT delivered $27.9 billion in EBITDA for the first quarter of 2025, a 2% increase year-on-year, demonstrating our ongoing efforts in managing costs while maintaining a resilient revenue base. OPEX, including subsidy and provisions, declined by $300 million to $86.1 billion, reinforcing operational discipline. Our in-built-in margin remained strong at 52%. Telco core income was at $8.8 billion, lower by 6% year-on-year, mainly due to increased depreciation from network expansion and associated financing costs. Our core income, on the other hand, held steady year-on-year at $8.8 billion, supported by Maya's positive contribution. A key highlight this quarter is Maya turning profitable, marking a significant milestone. Maya contributed $127 million in net income, a clear turnaround from prior year's losses, powered by robust loan growth strong momentum in deposits, and increased payment volume. Now let's move on to CAPEX and our debt profile. For the first quarter of 2025, our CAPEX stood at $10.8 billion, lower compared to last year, resulting in a reduced CAPEX intensity of 20%. This lower spend is partly due to timing, as a significant portion of our project for 2025 is adjusted slightly to 68% to 74% in the priority areas, plus LTE and 5G upgrade, plus LTE and 5G upgrade, plus LTE and 5G upgrade, as well as upgrade and modernization of network and IT to improve our quality of service. While we work on decreasing capex, we are committed to deliver greater outcomes through efficient use of capital and strengthen negotiations with contractors and suppliers. Let's review our debt profile. Our net debt at the end of March stood at $270.7 billion, resulting in a net debt to EBITDA ratio of 2.48 times, slightly improved from 2.52 times at the end of 2024. Our debt maturity profile remains well balanced, with 52% of total debt maturing beyond 2030. The average debt maturity stands at 6.5 years. We maintain prudent risk management. Foreign currency exposure remains low, with just 5% of total debt unhinged. Importantly, PLDT retains investment-grade credit ratings of BBB from S&P Global and BAA2 from Moody's, underscoring investor confidence in our financial health. Looking forward, we remain committed to generating positive free cash flow by 2026 and continue working towards reducing our leverage, targeting around a 2.0 times net debt to EBITDA ratio over the medium term. Now, I'd like to shift gears and share some exciting developments from two of our key road drivers beyond traditional telco. One is Vitro, our state-of-the-art data center business. and Maya, our FinTech driver, both continue to demonstrate strong momentum and reinforcing PLDT's commitment to innovation and digital leadership. Our virtual data centers, particularly our newly energized hyperscale facility in Santa Rosa, represent a major strategic step, positioning PLDT at the forefront of Philippines' digital infralandscape.

Now let's watch this short video to give you a closer look at the intro of Santa Rosa and why we believe it will play a central role in supporting the... The world as we know it is changing, scaling, moving in hypergrowth, a robust restructuring of every aspect of our lives through artificial intelligence. keeping in step with the Philippines' move towards being the next digital destination of the region. This year, Vitro Incorporated unveils the Philippines' first AI-ready hyperscale data center, Vitro Santa Rosa. Designed to power tomorrow's digital demands, Vitro Santa Rosa delivers an impressive 50 megawatts of power capacity. This immense power ensures unparalleled performance for enterprises, hyperscalers, and AI workloads alike. With a Tier 3 certification, Vitro Santa Rosa guarantees 99.99% service level agreement. That's true reliability you can count on. Its resilient power, cooling, and connectivity ensure your mission-critical operations never miss a beat. At its core lies a diverse network infrastructure equipped with a triple-route domestic fiber network. Vitro Santa Rosa ensures continuous operations with the lowest latency and maximum resilience. Step into a thriving digital ecosystem where enterprise, cloud and AI data seamlessly connect and synergize. Where everything your business needs is within reach and where your data takes center stage. And with its AI-ready infrastructure, Vitro Santa Rosa is prepared to unlock the true potential of artificial intelligence. Hosted in Vitro Santa Rosa, EPLDT is the first to bring NVIDIA-powered GPU servers to the Philippines. EPLDT can now offer GPU as a service, boasting of enhanced security and reduced latency, ideal for critical AI tasks that require fast response times. With EPLDT's GPU as a service, enterprises and government agencies can access powerful computing on a pay-per-use basis, making AI adoption faster and cost efficient. From training complex models to powering real-time applications, Vitro Santa Rosa is where AI thrives and connects to the rest of the country. Connected to the country's widest domestic and international fiber network, Vitro Santa Rosa serves as a gateway to the rest of the Philippines and the world. Vitro Santa Rosa isn't just a data center. It's the home of AI and hyper-connectivity, powering the digital future today. True infrastructure reliability. True AI capabilities. A first for the Philippines. This is Vitro Santa Rosa.

As you have seen in the video, Petro Santa Rosa represents a significant step forward, not just for PLED, but also for the Philippines' broader digital ecosystem. Officially inaugurated last month by President Marcos, this pioneering facility highlights our commitment to powering the nation's digital transformation. During the inauguration, President Marcos underscored that in today's world, data has become as essential as water and electricity. They emphasize the critical importance of continuously strengthening our data infra, particularly safeguarding sensitive and confidential information. Vitro Santa Rosa is uniquely positioned to meet these demands, significantly enhances our ability to support the nation's digital growth. I'm also pleased to share another strategic infra milestone, the recent launch of the AsiaDirect cable. This new subsea cable spanning 9,400 kilometers significantly enhances PLDT's international connectivity. With a substantial 227 terabits per second capacity, the Asia Direct cable offers unmatched low latency connections, particularly between China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, and Japan. This further strengthens PLDT's position as the country's largest fixed-line network provider with the most extensive set of international gateway facilities. For PLDT, this investment translates to strategic advantages, ensuring faster, more reliable, and direct access to our state-of-the-art facilities such as Vitro Santa Rosa. In short, the Asia Direct label is more than a fund. It's a core enabler of future revenue growth, service reliability, and market leadership. Now let's turn to another key growth engine, Maya, our fintech driver. Let me start by framing what makes Maya a unique position for sustainable growth and profitability. The short answer is it's unique all-in-one ecosystem that combines payment, banking, lending into a seamless platform for both consumers and businesses. This integrated model creates efficiency, scale, recurring engagement, which not only accelerates our growth but also strengthens our pathway to continued profitability. We believe that this comprehensive ecosystem gives Maya a clear structural advantage in aiding it to capture long-term value while continuing to deliver innovative, inclusive financial services to millions of Filipinos. I'll now take you through Maya's performance for the first quarter of 2025. Here you will see how this ecosystem approach continues to drive results across deposits, lending, payments, and customer engagement. In the first quarter of 25, Maya achieved positive net income. This marked its first full profitable quarter, a key milestone for its growth momentum. Maya continues to lead as both the number one digital bank and the number one merchant acquirer in the Philippines. The company has seen impressive momentum across key metrics. 6.8 million bank customers updated reinforcing Maya's position as the most adopted digital banking platform in the country. 1.8 million borrowers, doubling year-on-year driven by strong credit demand and AI-powered digital lending. 44 billion in total deposits, representing a 49% year-on-year increase and maintaining Maya's lead in deposit market share among digital banks. And finally, 120 million in cumulative loans dispersed since inception. On the payment side, Maya also retains the largest market share in card acquiring transactions, reinforcing its leadership in both online and in-store merchant payments. This potent combination of scaling adoption, growing credit, healthy deposits, and profitability reflects Maya's unique position as the Philippines' leading integrated digital banking and payments ecosystem. Now let me break down Maya's banking performance in more detail. The bank continues to see strong growth in consumer deposits, which reached $44 billion by end of March, representing a 49% year-on-year increase. This is a clear indicator of user trust and consistent engagement on the platform. Since 2022, the costs have nearly tripled. Alongside this, MAI has also scaled lending significantly. In the first quarter of 2025 alone, it disbursed $28 billion in loans, bringing total disbursed sales since inception to $120 billion. Now, loan book quality remains solid. Maya's loan outstanding balance $2.21 billion at the end of March with asset quality well managed. Its NPL ratio was 3.8% below both digital banking and broader industry averages. All in all, Maya is not just growing, it's also doing so responsibly with strong fundamentals in both deposit and credit performance. Maya's growth story isn't just about selling products. It's also about deepening engagement in creating a platform that enables our partners to access a tech-savvy, highly engaged customer base. In the first quarter of 2025, Maya expanded its consumer platform through high-impact collaborations across lifestyle, entertainment, and insurance. Some examples include the following. the integration of Palmini application within Maya that offers users a more seamless travel and loyalty experience. Maya now provides accessible insurance products directly in the application through SingLight. All through our partnership with Pepsi-Cola, Maya is enabling both payment processing and working capital loans for their network of more than 200,000 sari-sari stores and distributors. Maya is partnered with ABS-CBN and GMA for Pinoy Big Brother Celebrity Invention. This campaign drove a 3% increase in viewership compared to previous seasons and significantly boosted in-app user activity via interactive voting features. Maya is also seeing strong traction in consumer credit. It has issued approximately 200,000 credit cards since its launch in August of 2024. These moves strengthened Maya's position not just as a fintech and digital bank, but as a daily financial partner, helping Filipinos spend, save, invest, and borrow. Now, before we close out, I'd like to share some updates on sustainability as we continue to expand our efforts to embed this in our business. During the quarter, PLDT and SMART enacted biodiversity policies that commit to no net deforestations and no net loss in forest cover. As we roll out our network facilities, these policies ensure that we comply with environmental regulations and do not negatively impact the environment and local communities. PLDT and SMART continue to strengthen initiatives to keep our customers safe and protect children online. This includes the blocking of access to malicious content. With the election of PLDT to Governing Council of the Philippine Business Coalition on Women Empowerment, And of our Chief Sustainability Officer to the Board of Trustees of the Global Compact Network Philippines, we have new opportunities to collaborate with like-minded institutions and champion sustainability in business. Now that concludes our prepared remarks for PLDT's first water performance. At this point, we would be happy to open the floor for your questions.

Thank you, Danny, for your insights on the growth initiatives and key developments across our different business units. As you've seen today, there are some near-term challenges, but we do remain confident in our market position, supported by our strong operational fundamentals, strategic investments in digital infrastructure, and promising growth trajectory in Maya. I'd like to open the floor to your questions. To those who would like to submit their questions, you may use the Q&A box in your screen. Or you may also raise your hand, and I will unmute your mic before the session. All right, so we have a raised hand from Arthur Pineda of CICI. I'll unmute you here.

Hi, thank you. Sir, can you hear me?

Yes.

Yes. Thanks for the opportunity. Three questions, please. Firstly, on the enterprise segment, you mentioned that there was some POGO-related revenue pressures in the first quarter, which is putting it down. I'm just wondering, is this all done, or do you still see further downturns from this segment? I'm basically trying to figure out if we should start to see enterprise accelerating into the following quarters, given the new capacities from data center and all, or are there still some revenue pool from POGO cancellations? Second question I had is with regard to VITRO. Can you provide color on the take-up levels for the new capacities? Have you actually signed anchor tenants for this? I'm wondering how much the contribution could be for profits and revenues for the year. And third question is on Maya. Where do you see the profit momentum as trending for the balance of the year? Should we see this as further expanding on a hockey stick basis, or is it a gradual improvement in terms of momentum? Thank you.

Thank you, Arthur. Okay, so you have three questions here. I guess we can start with your question on BOGO. We have Blums Kaneda here who heads our enterprise business. Go ahead, Blums.

Yes, hi. Thank you for the question. So on the BOGO, as I think you remember, BOGOs were shut down actually in July of last year. So from that standpoint, we're still anticipating a continuation of the impact, especially from a same period last year compare on BOGO revenues as well as other connectivity programs that were discontinued over that time. So we should still see some drive maybe until about Q3. But I think when you look at the performance, a lot of the programs that the team has been running has helped us at least keep flat and make up a lot Thank you, Blos. Thank you, Arthur, for the question. I'm happy to share for V2 Santa Rosa. We've actually landed a big hyperscale customer of ours that's already availing of four megawatts of capacity. Because it's the first hyperscale data center in the country, we've been getting a lot of interest from Western and Chinese hyperscalers as well. There are ongoing discussions with them together with some big enterprises to help fill up the capacity in Santa Rosa. Thank you.

Thank you, B-Boy. And for the question in Maya, we have a user.

Hi, Jing, can you hear me? Thanks, Arthur, for that question. I think what we have seen is that we have consistently been reducing losses throughout last year and have now turned profitable. One of the reasons for that is that we have fairly strong operating leverage in the business, and so we should continue to see an increase in the margins and profitability as we continue to scale the business. I don't think you should expect a hockey stick growth, but a more sort of steady and gradual growth. margin improvement over time.

Understood. Thank you. Sorry, if I could just have one follow-up. With regard to the mobile business, I'm just wondering what the thoughts are into the second quarter. Obviously, first quarter was challenging. It's contracting year-in-year. I'm just wondering, your competitor has been communicating to the market that they've been seeing mobile improvements in the second quarter. Are you seeing similar trends?

Employee Marcus here who heads our smart business. Go ahead.

Hi, Arthur. While we see that markets have softened, the more important thing that we're focusing on is that we continue to grow traffic year on year. And this gives us confidence in monetizing demand when demand is here. And our aspirations continue to be always better than minor. So that will do to innovations and be invested as a network and be invested as a product in CX.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Arthur. All right, I have a question here from Nikki Frankel of Abaco Securities from the Q&A box. So the first question is on Vitro Santa Rosa ESG. So what is the rate of water usage for Vitro Santa Rosa? Will the local utility be able to supply the water required as it ramps up? Do you want to?

Yes, thank you for that question. Well, so far, the water utilization level or utilization that we are tracking in Santa Rosa is still at normal levels, similar to other data centers. We expect the water usage to increase once we start onboarding AI-specific workloads, which would need to run on liquid cooling technology. We are in coordination now with the water utility to be able to anticipate and see whether we can already prepare for that eventuality. But so far, with regards to water usage utilization in Santa Rosa, it's still at normal levels.

Thank you, Pipoy. Another question from Nikki, and this is in regards to Maya. Can you share interest income on loans as well as your cost of funds, also average loan tenor? Also, do the loans disbursed in the first quarter amounting to $28 million include receivables from the credit card business?

I think we'll be limited in terms of exact disclosure of the numbers to some extent. But, yes, the receivables do include the receivables from the credit card business as well. Yeah, I mean, we do report, you know, numbers on a consistent basis, on a quarterly basis, but at this point, I think it will be difficult for us to talk about loan yields and cost of funds specifically.

Do you have a target loan-to-deposit ratio?

Sorry, Jingay, I couldn't hear you. I think you're cutting out a little bit. Could you repeat that question?

Yeah, sorry about that. So this is in regards to the loan deposit ratio of Maya. So what is your target?

Yeah, so we don't have a specific target loan-to-deposit ratio, but we will continue to keep a slightly conservative loan-to-deposit ratio versus some of the traditional banks. I think we are still sort of early days. in terms of the stability of the balance sheet, and we do run a digital banking business. So, I mean, there's no fixed sort of number, but we don't want to see the loan-to-deposit ratio, at least in the near term, push very, very high, you know, like traditional banks.

I have a question here for the home segment. So PLDT added a significant number of subscribers this quarter. Do you anticipate this continuing at this pace for the rest of 2025? We have John here who heads our home business.

Yes, hello. Yes, we do anticipate the growth to sustain. In fact, we are looking at the growth path for the balance of year. Our net ads has been improving and we are launching several products and services in rapid succession in the next few months. That would address not just elevating our experience, but also expanding our reach. So the growth is not one-off. We've actually showed less than five quarters. They sustain growth at increasing increments every quarter, and we expect to sustain this until the end of the year. Thank you. I'll answer as well.

Sure. We have Butch Jimenez here, who is our COO. Go ahead, Butch.

Okay. Growth, I guess, aside from just looking at the growth, you really have to look at either we grow by postpaid or prepaid because that is very significant to the increase in revenue. So PLDD, from a strategic point of view, we're looking at growing primarily our postpaid product because that delivers higher ARPU, lower charge. We will also look at prepaid at a very strategic and deliberate level. But I think if you're going to compare us with other telcos, you have to compare not just the growth of subs, but you also have to compare postpaid versus prepaid. PLDD and SMART, we do have a two-barrel shotgun to look at prepaid or to attack prepaid. Aside from prepaid home fiber, we also have fixed wireless that SMARC is handling. So I think we have enough weapons to be able to attack the prepaid market effectively while making sure we continue to grow our postpaid market, which is really the bigger driver of revenue for fixed line telcos.

As a follow-up to that one question, we have another question on churn trends. How sustainable are these churn trends at current levels? Go ahead, John.

Yes, our churn has been showing improvement over time. We have seen our growth has been driven not just by increasing our growth ads and net ads, but also by better managing our churn. Today, we do have the best in industry churn rate at a sub-2% level, and we will continue to improve that as we approach the end period.

Thank you. Thank you. This next question is for our wireless segment, specifically on 5G. Looks like 5G adoption has increased materially quarter on quarter. How is your 5G monetization strategy progressing? and any notable ARPU uplift from this?

White? Our focus is still on 5G and building a meaningful and dense 5G coverage, which is also reflected in our double-digit 5G traffic growth, and I think you would see that. And the other thing that I'd like to add is that, in fact, we have seen over 60% growth in 5G devices. These two together would bode well for us in the coming months. We have seen, for example, high double-digit growth in 5G traffic. And I can say with comfort that there's a good double-digit percent of traffic in 5G that has been offloaded for 4G.

For those who have any other questions, you may raise your hand or you may put your question in the Q&A box. We have this question regarding our depreciation and financing costs. Can we expect depreciation and financing costs to continue increasing at similar levels, or do we expect these to taper off moving forward? Danny, can you take that question?

It's going to be almost on the current level.

So just the same?

That's right.

Even if we're acquiring more. So basically, because prices are going up, some are going to be fully depreciated.

All right.

On enterprise, I think this is in regards to the Asia Direct cable. How is this expected to enhance your competitive advantage, any quantifiable revenue impact from the go-live?

Okay. I'll take that. So directly, it is a big part of our competitive advantage. When you think about our top tier facilities like Vitro, Santa Rosa, locators are looking, especially international ones, are looking for multiple legs to So the fact, for example, that people look for Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong at minimum, right, Asia Direct Cable addresses that very specifically. And with 27 terabits per second, you know, that's at the right levels for low latency types of workloads and requirements. So a very, very big part of our strategy is not a standalone thing by any means, but it is a key enabler of the potential that we're driving.

data center business thank you clums all right we have john tens raising his hand of ubs um go ahead john yes um three questions for me first is on the prepaid mobile business there appears to be a softening of subscribers particularly for smart in the first quarter Although I understand that the market is soft, but anything unusual with regards to subscriber acquisition. Second question, on the other hand, is on the post-paid side. And I think there is sustained growth momentum at the expense of your competitors. So I guess a bit more clarity on what you think is mostly driving this. Third is on the broadband subscriber trends. Sorry I missed this earlier, but... Should we expect an acceleration in revenues beginning to QM3Q, given that the net ads in the first quarter were, I guess, stronger than what you've done over the past few quarters? Thank you.

Thank you, John. Okay, so I guess we can start with the question on prepaid mobile subscribers and the softening you said quarter on quarter. Boy, would you like to shed some color on those numbers, please?

um i think it's more to answer that on the on the issue of subscriber base i think more on equanimity uh would i be correct in understanding the question because if it's the art pool um overall our point of part is flat page while the market our pool is declining 96% year on year. And to that extent, I wouldn't put the differentiation on post-trade and pre-trade at this point. There's a blip that I see personally in that trend that we see in the rest of the industry. But in our case, our competitive differentiator is always product innovation.

Thank you, Boyd. I understand also, if I recall correctly, that we did become a little bit stricter regarding when we churn out some of our prepaid, right? So I guess, John, part of that is also a cleanup versus last quarter in terms of the number of subs. Boyd, this question is still for you. John's second question. He did note that we are gaining market share from our competitor. So he would like to basically... gain a little bit more color on how, I guess, what we're doing in order to gain that market share and how sustained you think that would be?

I think, yes. I think we attribute that more to our sustainable traffic growth for the last nine quarters. And that's, traffic is basically what drives monetization. Because when you have a growth in traffic, you're sure to have engagement, good customer engagement. And we're going to build on that. Year-on-year, we have grown 6% on network traffic, while the market has declined by 5%. So that signals our success in capturing demand and user engagement. We are hopeful in translating this to revenue through our hyper-personalized offers that we are having and will continue to have. By the way, our hyper-personalized offers are based on best-in-class technology like Adobe and AWS.

All right. Our last question, and again, this is in regards to our broadband subscriber trends. John, I know you spoke on this a little bit earlier, but can you talk about, you know, what we have to look forward to in terms of accelerating in that future?

Thank you for that question, John. John, the last few quarters, especially the last four quarters, has been very encouraging. We've seen signs, very clear signs that we have a clear path to even more growth, sustainable growth at that. The important thing is that we keep this business on track, focusing on strengthening our core network in servicing the customer, focusing on elevating the customer experience and expanding our reach. As Butch mentioned, we are not just expanding our reach geographically, expanding it to reach more homes as well as more segments in the market. All this put together, focusing on this, would also reduce our return. Customers tend to stay longer. And given that our business is hyper-focused on the post-fade side, we are seeing our R-Post remains steady at the 149 level, 1,496 level from Q1 last year, which is a good sign as well that this has not been diluted despite the fact that we've loaded an additional 305,000 subs this March. So it's very encouraging for us, and we do see a clear path to revenue growth. Thank you.

Thank you, John. We have another question here in the Q&A box from Ziwei Fu of Macquarie. Is there guidance for 2025 net income, and if not, why? It was suggested to be provided at the first quarter results briefing during the full year 2024 briefing. Danny, would you like to take that?

Even a softness of the numbers in the first quarter, I think we're unable to provide guidance at this point.

I think the MDP also mentioned earlier during the media briefing that it is a very fluid environment at this time. And so, you know, once things are clear, we will provide at that time. All right, another question, and this is in regards to PLDP stake in Maya from Nikki Franco. What is the latest on plans to increase PLDP stake in Maya? If this happens at some point this year, will it put back your targets to achieve free cash flow as well as your two times net debt to e-debt the target?

Danny? Well, even when we invest more in Maya, it's called – you might need the help of other affiliates of the first facility. But it's not going to be solid coming from PLUT.

If it happens.

If it happens.

All right, another question here in the Q&A box from Marie-Antoinette Delitak of Landat. Given CLBB's current negative net working capital and debt-to-equity ratio, what specific strategies and timelines are in place to improve working capital efficiency and optimize the capital structure to achieve a healthier financial position in the short to medium term?

Well, our main... Main purpose now is asset monetization, which includes copper mining, that's one. Second is the consolidation of central offices, which will result in selling some of the idle properties. The third is continue to look for a strategic partner in EPLDT, specifically in data center. The timing is between now and the next few years.

Thank you, D. White. All right, this next question is from Paolo Manansala of COL. I just wanted to ask regarding the mobile business, if you are seeing an intensification of competition, or is the industry softness in mobile driven by something else? Why would you like to take that piece?

Well, The soft test, I've answered, I think, a while ago, but I think the question is about the trend by which the rest of the industry is experiencing. Probably the question, are we going to be in the same trend? My answer is, we don't see the same trend. In fact, our data traffic continues to grow, and we see that this is being done on the backwards from 5G networks. So, we're going to be relying on that for the rest of the balance of the year in the years to come.

Thank you, Boyd. The next question is in regards to our data center business. With Vitro Santa Rosa now energized, can you comment on the potential enterprise revenue uplift once BSR is fully operational? And also, do you already recognize revenues from current AI workloads?

Boyd?

Thank you. Thank you, Chinggai. So, as you know, Vito Santa Rosa was just energized recently. It's a 50-megawatt facility that will provide 36 megawatts of IP load divided into 18 data pools of 2 megawatts each. So far, we have an anchor tenant that's already come in that's taking on 4 megawatts of space in Vito Santa Rosa. But aside from that, we are again looking at other hyperscale customers and enterprise customers to come in and fill up the rest of the space that we have. But I think more than that, Jingai, we're also happy to say that it is not only a hyperscale data center, but it is also an AI-ready data center. We are actually AI-live, and our definition of AI-ready is not a showroom, but actual GPUs that have been deployed and that is currently running live workloads and POCs for a PLDT smart. And we're very excited because in the next few months, we hope to launch a GPU as a service model targeting enterprises to make AI as reachable, accessible, and affordable to enterprise customers near the Philippines. So we're looking forward to that.

Thank you, B-Boy. All right, this next question is regarding our OPEX. Looks like it has been declining over the past few quarters. Moving forward, is there further room to significantly reduce OPEX, or are we nearing optimal levels?

We're nearing optimal level at this point.

Okay. Thank you, Bihoy. Okay. Any other questions from the floor? All right. It looks like we have exhausted the questions in the Q&A box, as well as the questions that were sent to me earlier. If we don't have any further questions, I'd like to thank everybody who's joined us today. We look forward to your continued interest in PLDT, and we look forward to having you again in our next earnings briefing come this August. Have a great day.

Thank you. Thank you.