ePLDT call center revenues up 53%

Information and communications technology company ePLDT’s call center revenues grew by 53 percent in the first quarter of 2005 due to continued growth in transaction volumes and increase in capacity utilization, company officials said.

With an ongoing expansion, ePLDT’s combined call center businesses are expected to see a significant growth in the number of seats, from 2,870 as of the first quarter of 2005 to 3,700 seats by the third quarter of the year, according to Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT) president and CEO Napoleon Nazareno.

He said ePLDT Ventus, the group’s third call center based in Iloilo, commenced commercial operations last month with 400 seats. Another call center will be established by the group in the third quarter servicing an American firm.

From P266 million in the first quarter of 2004, ePLDT’s consolidated call center revenues increased 53 percent to P408 million. Profits stood at P40 million for the Jan-March 2005 period, Nazareno said.

Meanwhile, aside from the calls centers, ePLDT’s other business segments which include Netopia, Vitro Data Center and other Internet-related services, registered consolidated service revenues of P652 million, a 50 percent increase from the P435 million posted in the same period last year.

Netopia, the country’s largest Internet café chain with over 140 branches in the country and about 6,600 PC terminals as of end-March 2005, continues with its expansion program and is expected to have 230 branches by the end of the year. Officials revealed that Netopia is also developing lifestyle gaming centers geared to capture technology savvy individuals.

Netopia’s service revenues grew from P42 million as of the first quarter last year to P62 million in the same period this year. The number of stores went up from 76 to 142 while the number of PCs increased from 3,534 to 6,634.

"The significant revenue growth across all our business segments is extremely encouraging and we foresee this positive trend continuing for the rest of the year. We also expect ePLDT to play a strategic role not only in content development and aggregation for the PLDT Group but in the latter’s transition to next generation services as well," ePLDT managing director Ray Espinosa said.