Digi 4Q16 earnings down 2.02 per cent y-o-y to RM374.63 million
Digi.com Bhd’s ( Digi) earnings for the fourth quarter of 2016 (4Q16) decreased by 2.02 per cent year- on-year ( y- o-y) to RM374.63 million from RM382.36 million recorded in 4Q15.
The telco services provider in a filing to Bursa Malaysia yesterday said 4Q16 revenue declined by 3.2 per cent y- o-y to RM1.67 billion from RM1.72 billion generated in 4Q15.
However, Digi noted 4Q16 pretax profit increased by 4.7 per cent y- o-y to RM543.61 million from RM519.36 million recorded in 4Q15.
Having said that, Digi in a statement said the group’s 4Q16 and financial year 2016 (FY16) results showed continued postpaid customer momentum, the highest recorded growth in the last eight quarters with solid net additions which drove earnings growth.
Digi closed the quarter with a 13.6 per cent y-o-y postpaid revenue growth, delivering steady service revenue of RM1.56 billion.
Service revenue for FY16 stood at RM6.23 billion with earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation ( EBITDA) of RM2.96 billion or 45 per cent profit margin, supported by 12.3 million subscribers on its network.
Digi’s chief executive officer (CEO) Albern Murty said, “This has been a year of strong execution for Digi.
“We have kept focused on delivering excellent, quality internet experiences for our customers on mobile while remaining solid in our operational performance.
“Customers are increasingly recognising the quality of our 4G plus network, internet and digital services, benefiting from the significant investments in 4G Long Term Evolution ( LTE), 4G+, fibre and digitisation efforts we have made over the year.
“This has led to strong growth in data usage across our customer base.”
Elaborating further, Digi revealed that the group’s service revenue for 4Q16 inched up marginally by 0.1 per cent quarteronquarter at RM1.56 billion but declined by two per cent y- o-y.
Surprisingly, postpaid revenue for 4Q16 grew by 13.6 per cent to RM511 million, supported by 14.1 per cent postpaid subscriber growth.
Prepaid revenue for 4Q16 moderated by 8.2 per cent to RM1.044 billion over a relatively flat 10.2 million prepaid base.
Apart from that, internet revenue for 4Q16 was up by 15.1 per cent over an expanded 8.1 million internet subscriber base as compared with 4Q15. In an effort to innovate mobile to deliver excellent services and digital experiences for customers, Digi disclosed that the group has invested RM780 million in capital expenditure (capex) to improve overall network coverage, density and performance in 2016.
The company also said it has accelerated expansion of Malaysia’s widest LTE Advanced 4G+ network that covered 41 per cent of the population and a solid 4G LTE footprint of 85 per cent, supported by 7,600 km of fibre network.
Besides that, it also introduced voice over Long Term Evolution ( VoLTE) service, a next-gen 4G innovation for customers to enjoy better call experiences through high definition ( HD) quality audio, faster call connections and simultaneous use of data.
In conjunction with the results, Digi proposed an interim singletier dividend of 4.8 sen per share.
The ex- date of the dividend entitlement is on March 1 and the payment date is on March 31.