Piltel: Telco Coming Back From The Dead
Do you remember Piltel? Yeah the company that introduced pagers decades ago?
(What do you mean “What are pagers?”!)
Piltel was nearly killed by the Short Message Service (SMS) business. In an amazing press-releasable comeback, the company is back up and earning again!
Piltel’s turnaround story is a landmark case in the country. It was a leading analog telephony and paging service operator in the 1990s until it was beset by technological and financial woes.
In early August 2008, Piltel declared a cash dividend of P30.43 per share to common shareholders of record as of Aug. 15, to be paid on Sept. 12, 2008.
Why the press release? Well, if you look at the recent release of Globe’s iPhone and Google’s Android platform (software for cell phones), it’s pretty clear the next business playing field (if it’s not yet already) is the mobile market. Piltel is signaling to investors that it’s now a player. It’s earning money and people can look back to them as a potential money-making business.
In this case, resilience seems to have worked.
America On-Line (AOL) went through something similar. They had an online service that became suddenly almost obsolete when the internet came. They came back and eventually earned again. AOL and Time merged in 2000.
Piltel and Smart joined forces:
As of end-June 2008, Smart and Piltel had accumulated a combined 33.2 million subscribers. Piltel alone was the third largest cellular service operator with 12.5 million subscribers.
So, apparently, Telco’s can come alive again. Oh, yeah, Piltel is now called Talk ‘N Text.
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