Indonesia-based XL Axiata booked a fall in profit in Q3, as increased infrastructure spending to expand 4G services offset steady gains in data revenue and ARPU.
Net profit fell 9.4 per cent from a year earlier to IDR300 billion ($21.1 million), which the operator credited to its ongoing network expansion, with a rise in regulatory costs due to higher frequency fees.
President director and CEO Dian Siswarini (pictured) said in a statement it faced challenging market conditions and continued its network investment to improve service quality to support increased traffic.
Service revenue in the quarter grew 3.1 per cent to IDR6.32 trillion. Data revenue increased 5.7 per cent and accounted for 95 per cent of total service revenue.
Capex for the first nine months of 2021 increased 25 per cent year-on-year to IDR6.4 trillion. Full-year capex is forecast at IDR8.5 trillion, up from about IDR7.5 trillion in 2020.
XL deployed 17,000 4G base stations in the first nine months of the year, taking its total to nearly 70,000 sites and reaching 458 cities nationwide.
Its mobile subscriber base inched up 1.9 per cent year-on-year to 58 million, while smartphone penetration rose to 92 per cent from 88 per cent in Q3 2020. Blended ARPU increased 2.8 per cent to IDR37,000.
![\"IT電腦補習](\"http://itteacheritfreelance.hk/test/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/logo2-2.png\"){kind=logo}
www.itsec.hk
www.itsec.vip
www.itseceu.uk
Leave a Reply