PhilWeb’s goal: become a multinational firm

Aya Lowe

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PhilWeb looks to new Asia-Pacific markets to grow its profit

ASIA EXPANSION. PhilWeb looks to increase its footprint in Asia. Photo by Rappler/Aya Lowe

MANILA, Philippines – Gaming solutions provider PhilWeb Corp. is looking at further expanding its network of Internet casinos in Asia Pacific to grow its bottom line.

“As we look at the coming years, PhilWeb will become more of a multinational company with the majority of revenues generated from companies outside the Philippines,” said the company’s president, Dennis Valdes, during their stockholders’ meeting on Tuesday, April 2.

PhilWeb, the self-proclaimed 7-11 of the gaming industry, has planned business ventures in Thailand, Laos, Nepal, Mongolia, Laos and Myanmar that will be rolled out over the next few years. The company will put up e-Games casinos and introduce its scratch-and-win cards in these markets.

The year 2012 was PhilWeb Asia Pacific’s (PWAP) first full year of operations. PWAP contributed 9% to the company’s overall revenue.

PWAP is currently operating in Timor Leste, Cambodia and Guam.

The company will soon launch its first e-Games casino in Dili, the capital of Timor Leste. The country has proven to be a profitable market for PhilWeb. PWAP sold 4.6 million scratch-and-win cards to a population of 1.1 million.

“Timor Leste is such a young and fresh country. In Dili, there’s only one mall, one movie theater. There are restaurants, but not a proper night club,” said Valdes.

However, due to the type of business they are in, expansion is not easy. “The difficulty of expanding anywhere in the world is that gaming always requires a special license. Most countries will say no like Indonesia and Malaysia. It’s a very restrictive gaming environment,” he said. 

Local footprint

PhilWeb posted a net income of P1.1 billion, the first time the company made more than a billion pesos. This was a 20% increase from 2011.

It recorded P1.5 billion in revenues in 2012, 27% higher than previous year.

The company now has a total of 277 e-Games cafés, with the 50 approved by Pagcor in 2012.

The e-Games division has increased its support to the 115 independent operators that run cafés. Almost all e-Games operators are in the process of reinventing their outlets, expanding and refurbishing them to offer players a better gaming experience.

“As a result of our continuous improvements to the e-Games network, total gross bets in 2012 surged to a record P125 billion, 16% greater than the previous year. We now have an average of 50,000 players per day across our network of 6,754 gaming terminals one of the largest linked network of the gaming terminals in the world,” said a company statement.

Each of these computers delivers an average daily terminal win of P2,202, and in total the network delivered a casino win of P4.7 billion. – Rappler.com

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