Malaysia’s TIME dotCom (TdC) has announced that in the three months ended 31 March 2014 group revenue stood at MYR131.88 billion (USD39.9 million), down marginally from the MYR133.01 million in the same quarter a year earlier. With the company claiming that performance in 1Q 2014 had been ‘distorted by non-recurring revenue from one-off contracts and global bandwidth sales in 1Q 2013’, it said that excluding this turnover was up 10% year-on-year, mainly from higher data and data centre revenues. Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) in the first quarter of 2014 stood at MYR42.8 million, down from MYR49.0 million in the corresponding period of 2013, while operating profit totalled MYR22.5 million, representing a 29% decline from MYR31.5 million in 1Q13. Profit before tax (PBT) in the quarter under review was MYR31.8 million, meanwhile, and although this was down from MYR37.9 million a year earlier, TdC noted that excluding non-recurring items the figure represented a 28% year-on-year increase.
Looking ahead, TdC has said that it expects earnings growth to ‘continue with the strong demand for higher speed bandwidth and mobile node fiberisation requirements by mobile operators’, with the company arguing that the rollout of LTE networks will open up more avenues for growth. TdC also aims to expand both locally and regionally, particularly in Southeast Asia, with CEO Afzal Abdul Rahim stating: ‘The upward trend in bandwidth demand around the region is extremely positive for the Group … We have the right strategies in place to capture this demand.’