Converge expects 55% household coverage by 2025

By Arjay L. Balinbin, Senior Reporter

LISTED fiber internet provider Converge ICT Solutions, Inc. is aiming to cover more than half of the country’s households by 2025, its top official said.

“We are hopeful that we can contribute to economic recovery as we reach our objective of 55% household coverage by 2025 with our fiber network and, in tandem, drive rapid take-ups once we deploy our ports,” Converge ICT Chief Executive Officer Dennis Anthony H. Uy told ����ý in a recent e-mail interview.

The company is hoping to serve around four to five million customers in five years, he noted. “We passed one million subscribers before the end of 2020, and we continue to see strong demand as we entered the new year of 2021.”

Converge is also expecting to sustain the growth it saw in 2020, as it extends its services to other parts of the country.

“We are expecting to complete our national loop within the year, which will allow us to offer fixed broadband connection to other regions that remain underserved,” Mr. Uy said.

The newly listed company recently reported an attributable net income of P2.19 billion for the first nine months of 2020, up 57.63% from P1.39 billion it earned in the same period in 2019.

Its total revenues for the January to September 2020 period jumped 67% to P10.68 billion from the previous year’s P6.39 billion.

Converge had initially said its residential and enterprise segments generated revenues of P8.41 billion and P2.26 billion, respectively, in the first nine months.

The company attributed the increase to the “higher revenue and prudent management of direct costs, including its international bandwidth and leased line costs.”

“Our expertise puts us in the prime position to help the community adapt to the digital lifestyle by serving their at-home needs,” Mr. Uy said.

“The work-from-home and study-from-home arrangements that we have seen at the height of the pandemic as well as the proliferation of online ventures have shown us another and more efficient way of going about our business, and we expect that to continue in some form or another,” he added.

Converge ICT shares closed 0.13% lower at P15.56 apiece on Friday.