DENNIS A. Uy’s DITO CME Holdings Corp. incurred an attributable net loss of P1.81 billion for the third quarter, a reversal of its P14.64-million profit in the same period last year.
Chelsea Logistics and Infrastructure Holdings Corp., his shipping and logistics company, cut its attributable net loss for the quarter to P1.13 billion from a loss of P1.32 billion in 2020.
In a stock exchange filing on Tuesday, DITO CME said it consolidated the financials of DITO Telecommunity Corp. into the company in the third quarter of the year, making it part of the reporting of its financial results.
For the third quarter, DITO CME reported P327.27 million in revenues, which generated a gross profit of P287.15 million.
However, its operating expenses for the quarter surged to P1.71 billion from P2.1 million in the same period a year ago, resulting in an operating loss of P1.42 billion from a loss of P2.1 million previously.
“The increase in operating expenses was mainly due to expenses involving the rollout of DITO Telecommunity in various areas within the Philippines,” the company said.
DITO CME, which owns 54% of DITO Telecommunity, handles the investments of Mr. Uy’s Udenna Corp. in media, communications, entertainment, and information technology.
It has three digital companies: Unalytics, which provides managed analytics services; Acuity Global, which curates media properties across platforms and provides media planning and buying; and Luna Academy, an online education platform aimed at equipping users with future-ready skills, credentials, and certificates.
For the January-September period, DITO CME reported P327.27 million in revenues, which generated a gross profit of P287.15 million.
Operating expenses rose to P1.75 billion from P3.68 million in the same period last year, resulting in an operating loss of P1.46 billion from a loss of P3.68 million previously.
“DITO Telecommunity is playing the long game. From day one, we did mention already that building a telco from scratch will be very much capital extensive, but the milestones reached in just nine months of operation is encouraging to say the least,” DITO CME President and Director Ernesto R. Alberto said.
The company said DITO Telecommunity now covers 340 cities and municipalities with over 3,300 towers built.
Since March, DITO Telecommunity has already gained four million subscribers, DITO CME noted.
Meanwhile, Chelse Logistics reported P1.14 billion in revenues for the third quarter, up 51.8% from P752.54 million in the same period last year.
Helped by lower expenses, the company managed to trim its loss before tax for the quarter to P1.13 billion from a loss of P1.29 billion in the same period in 2020.
Attributable net income for the nine-month period was cut to P2.2 billion from a loss of P2.6 billion in 2020.
Chelsea’s total revenues for the January-to-September period declined 1.5% to P3.27 billion from P3.32 billion previously.
The company managed to trim its loss before tax to P2.20 billion from a loss of P2.57 billion last year.
Chelsea said the narrower net loss was driven by “continued rational cost-containment measures as well as a slight year-on-year improvement in revenues led by its freight and logistics businesses.”
“Chelsea group’s third-quarter performance highlights the continuing recovery story for the industry as well as the group with our freight business leading the way,” Chelsea President and Chief Executive Officer Chryss Alfonsus V. Damuy said.
He said that despite the continuing fears from the spread of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) Delta variant, “we are confident that the economy is poised to gradually recover in the last quarter of the year as the government accelerates the vaccination program, which will bring about herd immunity for the population.”
“We have already seen a continued drop in the number of active cases with substantially lower positivity rates,” he added.
On Tuesday, shares in DITO CME fell by 1.49% to P5.95 each, while Chelsea shares closed unchanged at P1.93 apiece. Mr. Uy is chairman of both companies. — Arjay L. Balinbin