Philippine Long Distance Telephone Inc. said Tuesday it was revamping top management after income fell as it trailed rival Globe Telecom in subscribers and profitability.

PLDT chairman Manuel Pangilinan, who would remain president and chief executive, had said the pivot to digital would be difficult and complicated.

“For me, I would like to see some traction in terms of the revenues for PLDT in the course of 2017 and some improvements in core profitability and then that’s the time for me to let go if I can see that this management is on the right track,” Pangilinan said.

Pangilinan said the search for the new chief executive would start by mid-2017.

Eric Alberto is PLDT chief revenue officer reporting to Pangilinan effective December 1.

As a head of Enterprise, International and Carrier Business of PLDT-Smart, Alberto was able to transform and lead these business units into improvement,.

Alex Caeg was appointed head of wireless consumer division sales and distribution of Smart effective December 1.

Ray Espinosa was appointed corporate service officer effective Dec 1.

Ralph Burner was appointed chief customer experience and data analytics advisor; Jerry Braceas as chief information adviser; Liza Sichon as chief people and culture officer effective; Keith Walter, as IT transformation advisor of the business transformation office; Carlo Ople, as enterprise, international and carrier business digital marketing strategy head and Joseph Nelson Ladaban as PLDT Group Corporate-wide chief credit collection and churn management effective.

In December last year, PLDT implemented a management revamp after the mandatory retirement of Napoleon Nazareno as president.

PLDT, partly owned by Hong Kong’s First Pacific Co. Ltd. and Japan’s NTT group, said it booked a net income of P3.40 billion in July to September, down from P6.61 billion it earned in the same period last year.

This brought the company’s net income in the first nine months to P15.87 billion, lower by 37 percent than P25.34 billion a year earlier.

Globe, controlled by Ayala Corp., reported a net income of P2.7 billion in July to September, down from P5.43 billion during the same period last year.

This brought the company’s net profit in the January to September to P11.7 billion, down 17 percent from P14.1 billion in the same period in 2015. Globe’s mobile phone subscribers stood at 65.4 million at end-September, slightly higher compared to PLDT Group’s 65 million subscribers. DMS