Results for nine months ended 30 September 2017
· Service revenue for third quarter increased 4.9% year-on-year to S$206.7 million
· EBITDA for third quarter increased 1.3% year-on-year to S$75.5 million
SINGAPORE, 16 October 2017 – M1 Limited (M1) today announced the unaudited group financial results for the nine months ended 30 September 2017.
For the third quarter of 2017, service revenue increased 4.9% year-on-year to S$206.7 million. This was mainly driven by higher postpaid and fixed services revenues, which grew 5.5% and 19.9% year-on-year respectively. EBITDA increased 1.3% year-on-year to S$75.5 million. Net profit after tax declined 4.8% year-on-year to S$32.7 million, mainly due to higher depreciation and interest expenses.
For the nine months ended 2017, service revenue increased 1.4% year-on-year to S$612.9 million. Fixed services revenue increased 21.4% year-on-year to S$93.6 million and accounted for 15.3% of overall service revenue. Net profit after tax declined 13.9% to S$101.5 million.
During the quarter, M1’s fibre customer base grew 6,000 to bring total fibre base to 182,000. Following the 2G network shutdown in the second quarter of 2017, M1 conducted a review of the entire mobile customer base. This led to the termination of inactive and dormant customers, as well as migration of customers to the M2M (machine-to-machine) platform which are not included in the reported customer base. This accounted for a reduction of 14,000 postpaid and 47,000 prepaid customers. As a result, postpaid customer base increased 5,000 and prepaid customer base decreased 41,000 in the third quarter of 2017. Total mobile customer base was 2.01 million as at end-September 2017.
Average postpaid smartphone data usage grew to 4.2GB per month in third quarter of 2017, from 3.4GB per month a year ago. Mobile data revenue increased 1.7% percentage points year-on-year to 55.9% of service revenue in the latest quarter.
“With the shift in consumer preferences from traditional telecommunications to data centric services, we are addressing their changing needs through proactive customer service management, network optimisation and upgrades, as well as innovative and competitively priced service propositions,” said Ms Karen Kooi, Chief Executive Officer, M1.
“Our recently launched nationwide NB-IoT* network will further drive adoption of new and innovative IoT applications with massive connectivity. As it is a new technology and the eco-system is evolving, mass adoption will take time,” added Ms Kooi.
Based on current outlook and barring unforeseen circumstances, M1 expects a decline in net profit after tax for the year 2017.