KUALA LUMPUR: Maxis Bhd
’s net profit rose 10.65% to RM488mil in the second quarter ended June 30 and declared a second interim dividend of 5 sen net per share.
Its revenue for the quarter was flat at RM2.10bil compared with RM2.11bil in the same period a year ago. Its earnings per share for the quarter rose to 6.50 sen against 5.90 sen a share previously.
Chief executive officer Morten Lundal said the quarter was not its easiest where competition tried to improve subscriber market share by lowering prices.
“After some initial market turbulence, we saw at the closing of the quarter our results improve and we managed to keep our revenue and profit at similar levels compared to last year,” he said in a statement.
“We witnessed a data explosion in the last three to five months. People are using data and video much more than before, and just in the last 3 months, average mobile internet usage has grown from 1.7GB to 2.5GB, which is tremendous. For Maxis, it has always been about enabling our customers to enjoy their digital experiences in a completely worry-free way.
“In April, we upgraded over a million customers with a lot more data. That was the largest auto-upgrade we’ve ever done at Maxis and largest ever in Malaysia. For our Internet hungry prepaid customers, we offered a very attractive proposition in Hotlink FAST that gives customers Free 2GB of 4G Internet every weekend for life,” Lundal said.
He pointed out that Maxis invested over RM1.3bil last year, and it was going to invest the same amount this year, which was substantially more than other industry players.
“We are particularly proud of our industry leading LTE network, which has reached 80% of the population, covering more than 220 cities and towns.
“We are also progressing well in our ambition to be a fully digitalised Maxis where most of our interactions with our customers are digital, we move from products to solutions and we are fully digitalised in the way we operate as a company,” Lundal said.
In the second quarter to June 30, Maxis saw its service revenue dropped slightly to RM2,055mil against RM2,089mil in the same period last year.
Prepaid service revenue stood at RM959mil, down 5.3% quarter-on-quarter. The decline was mainly driven by a lower subscription base which continued to be impacted by intense price competition.
Maxis said its prepaid average revenue per user (ARPU), however, remained relatively stable at RM38, supported by higher mobile Internet usage. Prepaid Mobile Internet penetration stood at 52% as at the mid-year.
Postpaid service revenue declined by 1.7% to RM975mil. Similar to prepaid, the decline was due to heightened price competition which resulted in a lower subscription base.
In late April, Maxis proactively upgraded the data allocation of all MaxisONE Plan (MOP) subscriptions. Since then, the telco’s postpaid base has stabilised. However, the full financial is only expected in the coming quarters.
In terms of MOP subscriptions, this has increased to 1.29 million from 962,000 with monthly ARPU of RM143.
In the first six months to June 30, Maxis saw its net profit rose to RM1bil, up from RM851mil a year ago. Its revenue for the first half stood at RM4.24bil.
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