Malaysia’s Maxis Communications recorded an 8.9% year-on-year decline in turnover in the first quarter of 2014, which the operator attributed to its intentional elimination of what it termed ‘non-sustainable revenue relating to pay per use charges on data roaming and prepaid data’, as well as lower voice and SMS usage. In the three months ended 31 March 2014 Maxis generated a total turnover of MYR2.119 billion (USD660 million), down from MYR2.327 billion in the corresponding quarter of 2013. Services revenues meanwhile totalled MYR2.037 billion in 1Q14, representing an almost 5% decline against the same period a year earlier. With both mobile service revenues and fixed enterprise services revenues down against 1Q13, ‘home’ service revenues were the sole bright spot, with Maxis posting a 78.6% increase in this area, though as a proportion of total service revenues home services accounted for just 1.2%. Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) in 1Q 2014 totalled MYR1.073 billion, down from MYR1.122 billion a year earlier, with profit after tax for the period under review coming in at MYR517 million, a decline of 0.8% year-on-year.
As at end-March 2014 Maxis’ mobile subscriber base stood at 12.602 million, down from 14.136 million a year earlier, of which 9.238 million were pre-paid (1Q13: 10.780 million) and the remainder post-paid or wireless broadband. Home subscriptions were up year-on-year, however, almost doubling from 31,000 at end-March 2013 to 59,000 a year later. With regards to its infrastructure development, Maxis confirmed that it now has almost 5,700 3G HSPA+-enabled sites across the country, of which more than 4,300 have been upgraded with Dual Carrier (DC) technology to boost downlink speeds to 42Mbps. Meanwhile, having inaugurated its 4G infrastructure back in January 2013, Maxis noted that 17% of the population were now in the network footprint. In terms of capital expenditures, in the first three months of 2014 Maxis spent MYR118 million, compared with MYR191 million a year earlier.