Celcom’s mobile service revenue up 1.4% in fourth quarter

PETALING JAYA: Celcom Axiata Bhd posted a 1.4% growth in mobile service revenue to RM1.52 billion from RM1.50 billion in the fourth quarter (Q4), driven by data revenue which grew 10% year-onyear to RM2.26 billion in FY16.

The company said in a statement yesterday that the rise in data revenue was mainly contributed by mobile internet revenue growth of 19% year-onyear to RM2.08 billion.

Data revenue of RM611 million in Q4 accounted for 34.1% of the total revenue RM1.65 billion, while smartphone penetration was at 64% in Q4.

Celcom also saw quarter-onquarter growth in normalised earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (ebitda) of 10.9% to RM635 million and normalised profit after tax and minority interest (patami) of 1.8% to RM281 million.

Enhanced postpaid offerings such as First Gold 80 and First Platinum saw positive take-up, with a subscriber growth of 3.2% quarter-on-quarter and average revenue per user (Arpu) rising to RM80 from RM76 in Q3 for postpaid.

CEO Michael Kuehner attributed the Q4 performance to the company’s investments in network modernisation and LTE rollouts, digitised customer-centric approach, simplified product bundling and the organisational refresh introduced by Axiata Group.

For FY17, the company expects market revenue to remain flat while video usage will continue driving data growth. Capital expenditure (capex) for the year will be in line with 2016 level; its capex for FY16 and FY15 were RM1.33 billion and RM885 million respectively.

Kuehner said it will focus on providing superior customer experience, digitisation, simplification in product bundling and network modernisation this year.

“We are confident that the above modernisation initiatives will help us to offer seamless coverage, the best network quality of service and leading the data connectivity experience. We will continue to make significant investments to stand out and differentiate ourselves from our competitors, as we target to deliver the best data and video network in Malaysia,” he said.

He said that Celcom’s diversification into adjacency – convergences, internet-of-things and the enterprise business will drive some of the incremental growth for the company this year.