Digi said its stronger sequential performance and earnings were underpinned by solid postpaid and prepaid internet growth.
KUALA LUMPUR: Digi.Com Bhd posted stronger earnings of RM384.62mil in the third quarter ended Sept 30, 2017 from a quarter ago, underpinned by solid postpaid and prepaid internet growth.
It announced on Tuesday its earnings rose 7.2% from RM359mil in the second quarter ended June 30, 2017. Service revenue increased by 1.6% to RM1.476bil from RM1.453bil in Q2.
Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (Ebitda) was up 1.4% to RM727mil from RM717mil. Ebitda margin was steady at 46%.
Earnings per share were 4.95 sen and it declared an interim dividend of 4.9 sen.
Digi said its stronger sequential performance and earnings were underpinned by solid postpaid and prepaid internet growth, better monetisation and quality network delivery of data, underscored by a continued focus on operational efficiency steadily delivering healthy EBITDA margins.
Digi CEO Albern Murty described Q3 as a strong quarter, “reflecting that we have been disciplined to execute well against our business priorities to deliver earnings growth, steady margins with lower expenses”.
“These results were driven primarily by organic growth from our strategy for the past several quarters, centred around providing customers a quality experience on the best 4G Plus network, complemented by great value offerings.”
For the quarter, Digi’s postpaid revenue was up by 3.9% from Q2 while prepaid revenue stabilised sequentially.
The telco said the stronger performance in both postpaid and prepaid was backed by solid internet revenue growth of 8.3% quarter-on-quarter.
Driving the increased was the stronger monetisation of services from the 8.5 million active internet users in its base, of which 5.7 million are 4G LTE subscribers, and growth in data traffic on its network.
“The company also sees similar positive growth trends in its enterprise business segment and its new digital business ventures,” it said.
For the nine months, its earnings were down 11.2% to RM1.116bil from the RM1.258bil in the previous corresponing period. Its revenue fell 4.7% to RM4.695bil from RM4.927bil.
However, its earnings in the third quarter fell 12.2% to RM384.62mil from RM438.38mil a year ago. Its revenue slipped 3.1% to RM1.57bil from RM1.62bil. EPS was lower at 4.95 sen compared with 5.64 sen.
During the third quarter, Digi invested additional RM152mil in capex to intensify LTE 900Mz sites deployment and nationwide network expansion for 4G LTE: 87%, LTE-A: 49% and 8,000km fiber network
It also simplified its prepaid internet portfolio to include robust offers such as affordable weekly and monthly internet passes, and worry-free one time internet passes.
“Monthly active MyDigi users grew to 2.2 million while the volume of upsell transactions during the quarter surpassed 17.7 million,” it said.
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