Singapore operator M1 Limited has published its unaudited financial results for the twelve months ended 31 December 2014, reporting operating revenue of SGD1.076 billion (USD809 million), up 6.8% year-on-year, on the back of higher handset sales. The group said service revenue was up 1.4% to SGD831.1 million, driven by expansion in the post-paid mobile and fixed customer user base, as well as a strong revenue contribution from mobile data. Net profit for FY 2014 was up 9.7% on an annualised basis at SGD175.8 million.
M1 said turnover derived from mobile operations climbed 4.2% y-o-y to SGD671.1 million, fuelled by post-paid take-up, while mobile data generated a 5.7 percentage point increase in revenue and now accounts for 47.3% of total service revenues. At 31 December M1 had a total of 1.852 million mobile connections, down from 2.109 million a year earlier, and whilst the contract user base rose a net 19,000 y-o-y, the cellco said a change in regulations contributed to a fall in pre-pay users. In April 2014 the watchdog, the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA), reduced the number of pre-paid SIM cards that could be held per subscriber. More positively, M1 had a total of 103,000 fibre-optic broadband customers at the year end, up 18,000 in a year.
Commenting on the results, M1 chief executive officer Karen Kooi Lee Wah, said: ‘Faster network and devices will drive data usage in 2015. In December 2014 we launched Singapore’s first next generation 4G network, enabling download speeds of up to 300Mbps … We are well placed to capture growth in the corporate segment through our enhanced offerings, such as new state-of-the-art data centre and suite of cloud solutions.’