The Philippines’ second largest mobile operator Globe Telecom reported a sharp drop in profit in Q3 due to one-off charges related to an acquisition, while mobile revenue fell slightly as competition intensified.

The operator’s net income fell 50 per cent to PHP2.7 billion ($56.6 million), which Globe attributed to higher non-operating charges and depreciation and costs related to the acquisition of San Miguel Corp’s (SMC) telecoms assets. The company said excluding the impact of the SMC transaction and one-time gains recorded a year ago, its normalised net income would have been down just 2 per cent.

Its EBITDA fell 1 per cent to PHP11.9 billion in Q3.

Revenue for the July-September period was flat at PHP29.5 billion, with increases in home broadband and corporate data offsetting a 2 per cent decline in mobile service revenue to PHP2.25 billion and a 10 per cent drop in fixed-line voice to PHP898 million.

On a sequential basis mobile data revenue declined by 7 per cent to PHP8 billion in Q3, which it said was due to tougher competition during the quarter that hurt mobile data yields.

Mobile data services accounted for 38 per cent of total mobile revenues, up from 29 per cent in the first nine months of 2015. Total data revenue, which accounted for 49 per cent of total revenue in the January-September period, rose 34 per cent to PHP25.8 billion.

Globe’s subscriber base rose 16 per cent to 65.4 million in the first nine months of the year, while it added 50,000 broadband users to take its total to 1.15 million. Smartphone penetration increased to 54 per cent.

Since its joint acquisition in May of SMC, it has rolled out 1,160 4G sites on the 700 and 900MHz bands in urban areas. It committed in July to deploying 4,500 4G base stations and covering 95 per cent of municipalities and cities in the country by the end of 2018.

Its capex for the first nine months of the year reached PHP26.6 billion, compared with PHP32.1 billion for all of 2015. It recently added $300 million to its 2016 capex budget, with more than half allocated for mobile.