DITO CME Holdings Corp. expects bigger revenue contributions from its enterprise business this year, a company official said.

On the sidelines of the Management Association of the Philippines Inaugural Meeting, DITO CME Chief Financial Officer Leo D. Venezuela said that, although forecasts are still being finalized, the company is looking at positive growth this year.

“[This is] driven by improvements in the mobile business, a higher number of subscribers, as well as higher average revenue per user, and then… more revenue contributions from the enterprise group,” he told reporters on Wednesday.

“I think they (the enterprise group) are very much primed; they scoped who they have to scope, and I think there will be a lot of positive traction for the group going into 2025, and we believe that it (the enterprise business) can be a very strong separate revenue driver for the company,” he added.

DITO CME’s enterprise group deals with selling products and solutions to companies, which are mostly targeted at small and medium enterprises.

However, he said that the company expects it will not break even this year.

“In 2024 and 2025, we are not yet going to see us turning into profitability; however, what you can see in the 2024 and 2025 performance is that the trajectory is there — that is continued improvement and decreasing net losses,” he added.

CAPEX
For this year, Mr. Venezuela said that the company’s capital expenditure (capex) will no longer focus on network buildup but on improving the quality of services.

“We are done with our five-year commitments. In fact, during the last one, the commitment was only 84% population coverage; we were able to beat that by 2 percentage points, we did 86%,” he said.

“Now, where are we going to spend the capex on? Of course, population coverage will still go up as we will still be adding towers. However, the focus now is quality, as we can now be more targeted in our approach,” he added.

In particular, he said that the company plans to address remaining dead spots and in-building coverage this year.

“In DITO, you have a stronger connection when you are outside, but when you go inside a building or you go to the basement, there’s no connection yet,” he said.

“So, the focus is on in-building solutions. We are now talking to individual building owners, whether office, residential, or shopping malls, so that the same kind of quality that the subscribers have when they’re outside, they will also be able to enjoy when they are inside these buildings,” he added.

Asked about fundraising activities, he said that the company’s capex will be mostly coming from operating cash flows.

“But again, that does not prevent us from exploring fundraising activities,” he said.

“For this year, let’s just say that it’s in the normal course of business to look at several fundraising proposals. Remember, like what we have always been telling people, telcos are very capital intensive. So, there may be, but I don’t want to second guess,” he added.

DITO CME is the operator of Dito Telecommunity Corp.

Earlier this year, DITO Telecommunity said that it is setting aside up to P20 billion for its capex budget this year, lower than the P25 billion to P30 billion capex allotted in 2024.

On Wednesday, DITO CME shares closed 7% or 14 centavos lower at P1.86 apiece. — Justine Irish D. Tabile