PLDT chairman Manuel V. Pangilinan last week told reporters that the company is looking beyond the Philippines for content providers, with an eye on global Internet companies.
Pangilinan said GMA7 is no longer on its "radar screen" after the controlling shareholders of GMA Network Inc agreed to sell a minority stake to San Miguel Corp president Ramon S. Ang.
When asked if Ang's deal with the GMA shareholders would put an end to the PLDT Group's attempts at investing in GMA-7, Pangilinan said: "It's not up to us, isn’t it? It takes 2 to tango."
PLDT saw the acquisition of GMA7 as a boon to the group's strategy of evolving from a traditional telecommunications company into a multimedia service company.
The PLDT Group has been aggressively expanding its media portfolio, starting with its acquisition in 2009 of Associated Broadcasting Corp, operator of what is now known as TV5, a distant third in a ratings war lorded over by behemoths ABS-CBN and GMA. InterAksyon.com is the online news portal of TV5.
Besides TV5, the PLDT Group also owns Cignal, a direct-to-home pay-TV service – both folded under MediaQuest Holdings Inc. The group likewise has acquired interests in the country's biggest newspapers --Philippine Daily Inquirer and Philippine Star – as well as in niche broadsheet BusinessWorld.
PLDT expects to meet its core net income target in the first half of the year of P19.75 billion on the strength of its broadband business. For the entire 2014, the company is targeting a P39.5 billion core net income.
PLDT's core profit, which excludes foreign exchange transactions and other non-recurring items, went up by 2 percent to P9.8 billion in the first quarter this year from P9.6 billion in the same 3 months of last year.
