Singapore fixed and mobile operator M1 Limited (M1) has reported that net profits climbed 8.2% on an annualised basis to SGD86.7 million (USD69.9 million) for the six months to 30 June 2014, on (service) revenue that increased 1.5% to SGD412.9 million. The operator said the solid performance was driven by growth in its post-paid mobile and fixed customer base, as well as higher mobile data revenue. Mobile data rose 6.2 percentage points year-on-year to account for 33.6% of service revenue in the period under review, up from 27.4% in 1H13. EBITDA for the first half of the year was up 5.8% at SGD165 million, with an EBITDA margin of 39.9% from 38.3% in 1H13. CAPEX for January-June was SGD61 million, compared to SGD34 million in the year-earlier period.
As at 30 June 2014, M1 reported a total mobile base of 2.003 million users, down from 2.104 million three months earlier. However, M1 notes that its post-paid customer base grew by a net 32,000 users y-o-y, while pre-paid numbers decreased by 130,000 due to regulatory changes that took effect on 1 April 2014; the change in rules reduced the number of pre-paid SIM cards allowed per subscriber from ten to three, it said. The operator also reported that monthly post-paid churn was ‘stable’ at 1.1%. Finally, the operator reported that its broadband fibre customer base grew by a net 27,000 users in the year to end-June, to 94,000.
Commenting on the results, Ms Karen Kooi, chief executive officer of M1, said: ‘We continually enhance service offerings to the enterprise segment, and in the second quarter we launched several new high speed fibre broadband services, including Singapore’s first 10Gbps broadband service on the national fibre network. We will further expand our managed service offerings with Unified Communications and Network Applications Services. This will be augmented by our cloud-based data centre, which will be ready in the second half of 2014.’
Based on the current economic outlook and barring unforeseen circumstances, M1 is forecasting ‘moderate growth in net profit’ tax for FY 2014.