Pacific Internet bullish about future

Posting its ninth consecutive quarter of profits, Pacific Internet was upbeat about its future.

Pacific Internet (PacNet), an internet communications service provider, today announced that for the first quarter 2004 its revenues grew to US$25.1 million, which was a 7.4 percent increase over the same quarter last year.

Broadband revenues grew to US$11.4 million and net income grew to US$0.5 million, according to a statement issued by the company.

Dennis Muscat, managing director Australia/New Zealand at PacNet, told iTnews it was happy with the results.

Muscat said the company was quite “cashed up” at the moment, and had a good spread of businesses throughout the region.

“[We're] in a strong position to expand, and we're looking at expansion not just in countries across Asia Pacific, but in particular seeing if there's opportunities to expand in Australia as well,” he said.

Muscat said the company had nothing in the pipeline at the moment but that if an opportunity presented itself it would look into it, describing the company's approach to acquisitions as “fussy”.

Muscat said countries such as Singapore and Hong Kong had become more mature markets, with customers interested in value-added services such as virus and spam protection, and managed services.

In today's announcement about its first quarter results, PacNet chairman Low Sin Leng said that going forward the company would be increasing its focus on growing value-added services, “adding depth to the company's business portfolio and strengthening the relationship with customers”.

In PacNet's revenues, broadband continued to be the largest revenue contributor at 45.4 percent for the first quarter 2004. “This upward growth trend is likely to continue with the rapid penetration of broadband access across the region,” according to a statement from the company.

The statement also said that the company viewed the general economic climate as “increasingly positive. However, the company expects continuing competition and pricing pressure to be a challenge.”