Philippine Long Distance Telephone to prepay $106 million debt two years ahead of schedule

By Reshmi Basu

New York, Dec. 7 - Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT) said it would prepay the remaining $106 million of debt under its $145 million multicurrency term loan facility.

The company said it chose to prepay the facility two years ahead of schedule to accelerate the deleveraging of the fixed line business and to realize interest savings, according to a news statement.

As result of the early payment, the company has increased it debt reduction for 2004 to $450 million from the last announced target debt reduction of $350 million.

The facility, which was signed in September 2002, is broken into two tranches of Japanese yen and U.S dollars with final maturity on December 2006.

Interest on the yen tranche and U.S. dollar tranche was six-month Yen-Libor plus 385 basis points and six-month U.S dollar-Libor plus 365 basis points, respectively.

The company will be prepaying the balance of ¥7.276 billion and $35.5 million under the yen tranche and U.S dollar tranche, respectively.

"By the end of the year, PLDT's fixed line debt balance would be about $2 billion, on track to achieve our target to reduce our debt balance to below $1.5 billion by the end of 2006," said Napoleon L. Nazareno, president and chief executive officer, in the statement.

Philippine Long Distance Telephone, based in Manila, is a telecommunications provider in the Philippines.

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