Globe Board approves $850 million capex budget for 2018

Recently, Globe Board of Directors approved of the company’s US$850 million cash capital expenditure (capex) for 2018. This is to align with Globe’s vision to improve internet services in the Philippines, with the goal of becoming an admired nation for having first world internet connectivity.

Globe President and CEO Ernest Cu said that majority of the company’s capex for 2018 is geared to meet customer demand for more bandwidth-intensive content, which, in turn, will support the revenue momentum of Globe’s data-related services.

The company’s capex for this year would finance the company’s commitment to provide fast internet service to two million homes by 2020. A portion of it will be used for the deployment of massive MIMO technology to expand and enchance its LTE network in the country. MIMO technology will allow customers to have reliable data connection since a lot of customers using video streaming services.

Cu said that Globe has progressively increased its capex spending since 2015, averaging 31% annually on a capex to revenue ratio basis.

“We continue to be efficient in our network build, evidenced by the superiority of our mobile network, in terms of higher 3G and LTE availability both on a regional and nationwide basis,” said Cu.  He further elaborated that for the first nine months of 2016 and 2017, Globe mobile data network carried over 2.4x the traffic of competition.