Malaysia’s Maxis has published its financial results for both the three-month and twelve-month periods ended 31 December 2016. In the company’s final quarter of 2016, the operator recorded total turnover of MYR2.214 billion (USD498 million), up 1.7% year-on-year, while revenues for the fiscal year stood at MYR8.612 billion, compared to MYR8.601 million in FY 2015. Full-year service revenues were down, however, falling by 0.8% to MYR8.455 billion, though it fared better in the final quarter of 2016, with service revenues in Q4 rising to MYR2.165 billion, representing a quarter-on-quarter increase of 2.5%. Normalised EBITDA of MYR4.484 billion for FY 2016 was up from MYR4.425 billion a year earlier, attributed in part to ‘efficient marketing spend and [a] cost optimisation programme’. Meanwhile, the company saw a normalised profit of MYR1.963 billion in 2016, roughly unchanged from the MYR1.960 million booked in 2015.
In operational terms, Maxis closed out 31 December 2016 with a mobile subscriber base of 10.851 million, down from 11.579 million a year earlier. While the cellco has continued to shed customers, it sought to highlight the fact that this smaller subscriber base has had a positive impact on blended monthly average revenue per user (ARPU), which rose to MYR57 per month in the last quarter of 2016, up from MYR54 in the corresponding period a year earlier. Additionally, Maxis said it had continued to register ‘solid 4G LTE adoption momentum’ ending the year under review with a total of 4.6 million customers utilising the technology, up by two million y-o-y, with these on average using 5.9GB of data per month. With regards to 4G coverage, meanwhile, the operator confirmed it now offers its LTE-based services to 88% of the population.