Maxis Q2 profit up 6.6%

Lundal: ‘Our intense focus on unmatched customer experience and to provide the best network for data are rewarded with more and happier customers.’

PETALING JAYA: Maxis Bhd registered a 6.6% rise in its profit after tax for the second quarter of its financial year 2015 ending Dec 31 (FY15) to RM485mil from RM455mil in the preceding quarter.

The telco’s quarter-on-quarter (q-o-q) topline figures of revenues declined slightly by 2% to RM2.11bil, while the service revenue of RM2.1bil for the second quarter was 2% lower than the first quarter.

Maxis’ earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) improved q-o-q in the second quarter to total RM1.1bil. This implied an Ebitda margin of 52.2%, from 48.7% in the previous quarter.

The company said that the improvement in Ebitda was mainly due to lower foreign exchange losses in the quarter, while all other costs were relatively unchanged q-o-q.

It yesterday also announced a second interim dividend of five sen per share.

Maxis noted in its statement that its q-o-q prepaid growth momentum was impacted by the goods and services tax (GST) on the prepaid service.

But its better performance was underpinned by strong customer propositions and a high-performing network.

“The number of revenue-generating subscribers grew further in the second quarter to reach 12.2 million.

“Maxis now has 9.1 million mobile Internet users and its smart-phone penetration stood at 65% this quarter,” it said.

Chief executive officer Morten Lundal said that it was a good quarter for the company both operationally and financally after taking into account the early GST hiccups and the general impact of the GST on prepaid.

“Our intense focus on unmatched customer experience and to provide the best network for data are rewarded with more and happier customers,” Lundal said.

The company, meanwhile, added that the comparable profit after tax in the second quarter of FY15 was due to adjustments for one-off items, including accelerated depreciation due to the network modernisation programme and change in estimated asset useful lives totaling RM56mil.

The tax effect of the adjustment was RM14mil.

The telco had invested RM260mil in the second quarter of FY15 to support network modernisation, long-term evolution (LTE) expansion and capacity upgrade to support traffic growth.

“Maxis will continue with high capital expenditure for 2015 of at least RM1.1bil to complete its network modernisation, drive 4G LTE expansion, as well as further improve capacity and quality,” the company said.

Maxis said that its 4G LTE coverage had approached 41% of the population, including key market centres and state capitals, and aimed to reach at least half of the Malaysian population by the end of this year.