Singapore telecoms operator M1 Limited has published its financial results for the three months ending 31 March 2018, reporting that service revenue increased by 3.0% year-on-year to SGD184.7 million (USD140.9 million), aided by higher sales of Fixed segment services and post-paid revenues – the corporate & government segment, for example, contributed 37% of total service revenue and reported 19% y-o-y growth in the quarter. Net income, however, stalled year-on-year at SGD34.8 million, although it was up 8.3% quarter-on-quarter, M1 said. Operating costs stood at SGD102 million in the first three months of 2018, down 4.5% from SGD107 in the year-ago quarter. EBITDA slipped 2.3% y-o-y to SGD75 million, but was only 0.5% lower than the figure of SGD76 million reported in 4Q17. First-quarter CAPEX was SGD23 million, down 54.2% from SGD50 million previously.
The city-state’s third largest operator by subscribers and revenue said Fixed services revenue continued to see strong growth, increasing 13.9% y-o-y to SGD31.9 million (17.3% of service revenue), thanks to strong subscriber gains in both residential and business fibre broadband users; M1 ended 31 March 2018 with a total of 194,000 broadband subscribers, up a net 5,000 in the quarter, and compared to 168,000 in 1Q1. Meanwhile, Mobile service revenue increased 2.6% on an annualised basis to SGD140.9 million, with mobile data contributing 61.3% of the total, up from 54% a year ago. Average post-paid smartphone data usage was 4.5GB per month in the period under review, up from 3.7GB per month in 1Q17, as M1 added a net 12,000 post-paid customers in the quarter, for a total of 1.304 million at 31 March 2018. Monthly post-paid ARPU was SGD54.6, down from SGD55.7, although churn remained stable y-o-y at 1.0%. Pre-paid mobile users, however, dipped to 688,000 from 775,000 at 31 March 2017. PAYG ARPU was SGD9.9 per month, down from SGD11.0 in 1Q17.