M1 Limited, the smallest of Singapore’s three telecommunications operators, has published its full-year earnings for the twelve months ended 31 December 2015, reporting that while total operating revenue edged up 7.5% year-on-year to SGD1.157 billion (USD835 million) on the back of higher handset sales, service revenue fell 1.1% to SGD822.3 million on lower international call services. Nevertheless, full-year net income climbed 1.5% to SGD178.5 million aided by a rise in mobile data usage, it said. Sales derived from mobile data surged 10.7% y-o-y and now account for 46.3% of total service revenue, and fixed services revenue for FY2015 increased 21.7% to SGD85.9 million, contributing 10.4% of service revenue, with growth being fuelled by a rise in residential users, as well as new contracts secured in the corporate segment. EBITDA was up 1.9% y-o-y from SGD336 million to SGD342 million and EBITDA margin (on service revenue) improved from 40.4% to 41.6%. Full-year CAPEX of SGD133 million marked a cut of 4.4% from the previous year.
Commenting on the results, M1 CEO Karen Kooi, said: The entry of OTT content providers such as Netflix and Viu, offering a large library of on-demand content at low monthly subscription, will effectively unbundle content from access. This will further level the playing field.’
M1 closed out 2015 with a total of 1.930 million mobile customers, thanks to 76,000 net additions in twelve months. The post-paid customer base increased 46,000 y-o-y to 1.195 million, while pre-paid users grew by a net 30,000 to 733,000. During the year under review, the operator’s fibre-optic customer base grew by a net 25,000 to 128,000, it added, as fibre monthly ARPU surged 6.4% to SGD46.7.