The HSBB2 plan consists of two parts under Budget 2014 with RM3.6bil allocated for the project, which aims to expand coverage, mainly in urban and suburban area. Of the total allocation, RM1.8bil would be spent on expanding coverage in mainly urban areas, while the rest was for suburban areas, Zamzamzairani said.
KUALA LUMPUR: Telekom Malaysia Bhd
reported slightly lower earnings for the third quarter ended Sept 30, 2016 due to higher operating costs in line with the decrease of operating profit before finance cost.
It said on Friday its earnings fell 4.2% to RM160mil from RM166.87mil a year ago. Revenue was flat at RM2.92bil while earnings per share were at 4.25 sen compared with 4.44 sen a year ago.
Operating profit before finance cost decreased by 32.2% to RM304mil from RM448.5mil a year ago “due to higher operating costs which includes accelerated depreciation of WiMAX assets and write-off of dismantled sites”.
Telekom also said there were also minimal foreign exchange losses on international settlement in the current quarter compared to a significant net gain in corresponding quarter last year.
The slightly higher revenue was boosted by higher revenue from Internet and multimedia, other telecommunication related services and non-telecommunication related services partially offset by reduction in voice and data services.
Internet and multimedia services saw an 8.8% increase in revenue of RM918.8mil from RM844.5mil a year ago mainly due to increase in UniFi customer base of 921,000 at the end of the current quarter compared to 793,000 a year ago.
Group CEO Tan Sri Zamzamzairani Mohd Isa said: "We remained resilient over the first nine months of the year despite an overall challenging environment.
“Our LTE service, webe, is now officially operational, and still has an impact on our financial performance, on account of the costs associated with the LTE rollout and Webe’s initial operations,” he added.
The stronger nine months’ performance was mainly due to positive growth in the key products, mainly internet & multimedia, data and other services.
“Operationally, we recorded a 3.3% increase in total broadband customers YTD as compared to last year, from 2.29 million to 2.37 million.
“UniFi continues to drive growth, with over 921,000 customers in total. I’m also pleased to note that to date, more than 62% of our broadband customers are currently subscribing to packages of 4Mbps and above. Meanwhile, 75% of our UniFi customers are now on packages 10Mbps and above,” he added.
For the nine-months ended Sept 30, 2016, group revenue rose 3.4% to RM8.82bil from RM8.54bil in the corresponding period last year; on the back of higher revenue contribution from internet, data and others services.
However, operating profit (EBIT) fell 13% to RM868.1mil primarily due to higher marketing cost, unrealised foreign exchange loss on international trade settlement and accelerated depreciation of assets.
“Stripping off some non-operational items, in particular unrealised foreign exchange loss on international trade settlement, group normalised EBIT dipped 0.6% year-to-date at RM885.1mil,” it said.
Telekom said profit before tax (PBT), however, rose 17.6% year-to-date to RM807.9mil from RM687.2mil a yerar ago due to net foreign exchange gain on borrowings.
Earnings rose 22.4% to RM621.7mil as a result of higher PBT and netting off the share of subsidiaries’ performance to minority interests.
Total capital expenditure for the nine-months to September 2016 was RM1.65bil or 18.7% of revenue, with spending during 3Q2016 at RM715mil.
“The higher capex is in line with the expansion of major projects whilst higher YTD cost as a percentage of revenue is in line with higher revenue and launch of new products and services,” it said.
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