Du’s 9-month profit surges 9.2% Issac John
dubai — Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Company, or du, reported on Wednesday 9.2 per cent surge in net profit after royalty to Dh1.41 billion for the ninemonth period ended September 30, 2018.
The telecoms operator said its nine-month revenue rose 4.8 per cent to Dh10.01 billion while third quarter revenue increased 6.4 per cent to Dh3.33 billion. Net profit after royalty for the third quarter was solid at Dh441 million.
Osman Sultan, EITC’s Chief Executive Officer, said the strong revenue growth and increased profitability was achieved despite more pressure in the pre-paid market.
“Fixed line revenues are very healthy and continue to show strong growth, up 7.8 per cent to Dh1.72 billion in the first nine months of 2018, and up 7.8 per cent to Dh579 million for the three-month period. Despite more pressure in the pre-paid market, mobile revenue remained stable at Dh5.40 billion, driven by growth in our post-paid customer segment during the first nine months of the year,” said Sultan.
The telecoms major reported solid normalised growth of four per cent in earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amorti- zation (Ebitda) to Dh4.06 billion for the first nine months of 2018, which excludes the impact of one off regulatory cost benefits.
“Reported Ebitda shows 8.3 per cent growth to Dh4.23 billion for the nine-month period ended 30 September 2018. For the three-month period, EBITDA increased by 2.8 per cent reaching to Dh1.37 billion, driven by the solid revenue performance and the continued success of our efficiency programme launched two years ago,” said Sultan.
He said du made excellent progress operationally during the quarter in advancing its digital transformation agenda and cementing our growth to a fully integrated ICT player. “We partnered up with ADGM to provide digital and ICT solutions, we opened the first fully-digital store in DIFC to support our enterprise customers and won the Smart Cities Award at the Telecoms World Middle East 2018 for our role in developing Dubai Pulse – a platform owned by Smart Dubai office,” Sultan said in a statement.
He said du is working diligently to bring next generation technologies such as 5G, IoT, AI, and blockchain into our network. “We are operating in an environment characterised by rapid change and disruptive innovations and we are proud to be at the forefront of the digital revolution. We have a clear vision and well-defined framework to become an ICT service provider by 2021 and support the UAE Vision 2021 strategy.”
Sultan said EITC has doubled the number of UAE nationals employed since 2006 as a result of its Emiratisation policies. Emirati employees form the highest percentage among all 65 nationalities within EITC.