PhilWeb profit spikes 89% to P552 million on robust gaming biz

MANILA, Philippines - PhilWeb Corp., the country’s first and largest listed online technology firm, sustained a steady upward income trajectory with its profit spiking 89 percent last year due to robust sales from its gaming businesses.

Given its strong performance and the launch of its online gaming operations abroad as well as other new businesses, PhilWeb expects its net profit to exceed the P1 billion mark this year.

In a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange, PhilWeb said its unaudited net earnings for 2009 amounted to P552 million, bulk of which, or P523 million, came from its core gaming operations which represented an increase of 126 percent over the previous year.

The remaining P29 million profit came from PhilWeb’s equity investment in ISM Corp. amounting to P633 million. As of end-December last year, ISM shares closed at P0.065, which is worth over P3 billion or almost five times better than PhilWeb’s investment cost.

“Our unrealized gain of P2.4 billion from our investment in ISM is a real albeit hidden jewel in our balance sheet,” said Dennis O. Valdes, president of PhilWeb.

The company registered revenues of P820 million, up 82 percent from 2008 level.

PhilWeb said the hefty profit growth was driven mainly by the quicker expansion of Pagcor’s e-Games (PEGS) cafes, the company’s major source of revenues.

PhilWeb opened 50 e-Games cafes last year, bringing the company’s total Internet gaming shops to 171.

Other products, namely Basketball Jackpot, Premyo Sa Resibo and the newly launched Bid Wars mobile game, also contributed to revenue growth.

PhilWeb is an active partner of the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) in the Premyo sa Resibo (PSR) raffle, which is aimed at encouraging consumers to ask for official receipts for every purchase made. PSR is a nationwide, mobile phone text-based raffle program where consumers send in data from their official receipts in exchange for electronically generated raffle entries.

“We had an excellent 2009 but are even more excited about our prospects in 2010,” said Valdes, adding that “PhilWeb and ISM’s recent acquisition of Acentic GmbH, which provides in-room guest entertainment services to the hospitality industry, will provide us a platform for international expansion.”

“PhilWeb’s role in this expansion will be to look at introducing gaming into the Acentic network of over 200,000 rooms, and partner with ISM in growing Acentic’s reach into Asia,” Valdes said.

Valdes also reported that PhilWeb Homeplay Inc., a subsidiary of PhilWeb, was granted authority by Pagcor to operate e-Games Online. This would allow Filipinos nationwide the ability to access Pagcor’s suite of casino games via the website www.egamesonline.com.ph.

“We have every reason to believe that e-Games Online will match the performance of our PEGS network within a year. With the combination of Acentic and PhilWeb Homeplay, we fully expect our 2010 bottom line to exceed a billion pesos,” Valdes said.

PhilWeb earlier set up a P1 billion wholly owned unit, PhilWeb International Gaming Corp., to operate foreign government-franchised gaming businesses outside the Philippines beginning this year.