NO WAY to go but up for Converge ICT Solutions (Converge). Its subscriber base and revenues for the past nine months and maybe even beyond are on that track. Fast at that.
Already its fiber ports are now almost the same to number of ports of the largest operator which operates nationwide.
“And we are not even (operating) national,” Jesus C. Romero, Converge Chief Operating Officer said in an video press conference to report the company’s earnings and achievements for the first nine months of this year.
He uttered that not just with confidence but also with a smile from ear to ear, manifesting a poise, focus and direction – 2022 growth. (Or probably an incentive that includes handsome Christmas bonus for all)
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Our very own Dennis Anthony Uy (again, not that of Davao fame) has done it over and over again.
With brothers Jack and Allan, they turned a Betamax/VHS rental shop into a cable TV company, a computer shop into enterprise solutions provider. Now, he is turning Converge into a telecommunications empire that will soon saturate the three major islands of the country. Lest we forget too, the lovely wife -- Grace -- has always been and will always be by Dennis’ side for support.
Converge remains focused on serving more households in the country for next year. Expanding wide and fast under its “go deep, go national” battlecry, Converge is aiming to reach more cities, more areas nationwide.
“We have completed our nationwide backbone, allowing us to expand into new areas in the Visayas and Mindanao, while continuing to go deep into underserved areas in Luzon. We have also augmented our sales force so that we can serve a broader number of our people with world-class fiber broadband connectivity,” said the visionary Dennis.
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Converge recently reported a net income of nearly P5.2 billion at the end of September 2021, more than doubling at approximately 136% growth over the P2.2 billion net earnings booked in the same period last year, amid continued strong growth in its subscriber base and sustained recovery of its business segment led by small and medium enterprises.
During that video presscon last week, I asked company skipper Romero on what would be the publicly-listed company’s priority for 2022, who, without batting an eyelash said is also adding “go serve” as a new facet in its new mantra.
“Go Deep means we have to add capacity. Go National means we need to continue to wire the cities where our backbone passes through,” Romero said during a recent press conference.
He added that “Go Serve” includes quality of service while having value-added features of their offerings.
“This is putting color into fiber rollout because there are different facets into it,” he added. This is building more redundancy into our network so that we can achieve our strategic network imperative which is high availability,” he furthered.
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As of end-September 2021, the nationwide network of Converge reached more than 9.6 million homes, allowing it to accelerate its target to cover approximately 55% of Filipino households to 2023, two years ahead of the original 2025 schedule announced during the Initial Public Offering last year.
With strong and continued subscriber take-up, the consolidated revenues of the Company grew by 76.4% year-on-year to P18.8 billion in the first nine months of 2021. Revenues from the residential business grew by 94.6% YOY, almost doubling to P16.4 billion during the nine-month period. Residential average monthly revenue per user (“ARPU”) remained steady at P1,346. On the other hand, Converge Business revenues grew by 8.5% YO, to P2.5 billion, mostly from the SME segment, continuing the reversal trend seen in the second quarter of 2021.
Growth, coverage, service – seem unstoppable at the moment for Converge.