Sep. 30--Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT) expects "softer" sales in the third quarter due to weak net addition of subscribers. "No doubt that the third quarter is softer than what we expected, in terms of revenues and subscribers,"

Napoleon Nazareno, president and chief executive of PLDT and Smart Communications Inc. told reporters during the launch of a partnership with Bank of the Philippines Islands on mobile banking.

Nazareno said net addition to its subscriber base is likely to be lower than a million in the third quarter, adding that the three-month period ending September traditionally was a low point for the industry every year.

At end-June, the company registered 38.5 million subscribers.

Despite his bearish outlook, Nazareno said the "third-quarter bottom line would be good."

He attributed the "good" bottom line to the investment in Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) and cost reductions.

PLDT, partly owned by Hong Kong's First Pacific Co Ltd. and Japan 's NTT Group, purchased a 20-percent stake in Meralco for P20.07 billion through Pilipino Telephone Corp. (Piltel).

The PLDT Beneficial Trust Fund (BTF) also bought a 10.2-percent stake in the country's largest electricity distributor, bringing the PLDT group's shareholdings to 30.2 percent.

The telco reported a net income of P19.7 billion at end-June, up by 2 percent from the same period last year. In the second quarter alone, its earnings rose 15 percent to P10.14 billion from P8.8 billion last year.

Manuel Pangilinan, PLDT chairman, had said the telco raised its core profit projection for this year to P41 billion from an earlier P40 billion.

He attributed the upward revision to the strong first half financial performance, continued growth in cellular and broadband businesses and the reduction of income taxes starting 2009.

Bong Mojica, Smart's wireless consumer division chief said revenues from text messaging, multimessage service and cellular voice calls went up by 12 percent, particularly on September 26 when Typhoon Ondoy hit the country.

On average, Smart handles 800 million text messages in a day.

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