Axiata grows revenue in tough conditions

PETALING JAYA: Despite the increasingly challenging operating environment and early consequences of the damaging Covid-19 fallout, Axiata Group Bhd said its revenue grew 1.5% year-on-year (y-o-y) to Rm6bil in the quarter while its ebitda increased 3.4% to Rm2.5bil.

This was due to improved operational performance from all Opcos (operating companies) except Ncell and Axiata Digital (AD).

Its free cash flow (FCF) rose 25.6% to Rm1.2bil, lifted by ebitda growth and lower capex.

Despite better toplines, its net profit of Rm398.3mil was dragged mainly by forex losses arising from the strengthening of the US dollar against local currencies and oneoffs, especially Celcom’s Rm76.9mil employee restructuring program (ERP). Its bottomline, further impacted by lower one-off gains, stood at Rm188.1mil compared with Rm725.2mil previously.

Axiata recognised a gain of Rm278.9mil from XL’S sale and leaseback of telecommunication towers as compared to 1Q19, where the group saw a one-off gain totaling Rm415.4mil from the disposal of non-strategic investments.

Revenue (ex-device) rose 1.5% to Rm5.9bil which attributable to increased contribution from all Opcos, although Celcom and Ncell faced tough market competition. The group’s underlying ebitda grew 2.5% y-o-y to Rm2.5bil, driven by double-digit growth from XL, Smart and edotco, with Robi posting strong single digit growth.

Axiata’s cash balance rose to Rm6bil.

In a release, Axiata’s president and group chief executive officer Tan Sri Jamaludin Ibrahim said: “Overall for the group, there was limited immediate impact from Covid-19 in the first quarter as demonstrated by good growth in revenue, editda and free cash flow.

“This reflects the hard and fast execution of our operational excellence initiatives.”

“Bandwidth will become as critical as utilities, heightened demand will build-up for solutions, tools, platforms and applications.

“From individuals to organisations, they are now firm believers in and adopters of digitisation with customers themselves already ‘digitally accelerated’. We believe we will see the rise of the telco industry as one of the biggest winners in this new world. It would also be the engine of growth for the global economy,” said Jamaluddin.