DiGi.com Berhad (DiGi) announced its third quarter(Q3) financial results today.
DiGi’s earnings rose 7.8% to RM315.37mil in the third quarter ended Sept 30, 2012 from RM 292.44mil a year ago. Revenue grew to RM1,583 million while its earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) and EBITDA margin stood at RM715 million and 45.2% respectively.
The Telco revealed that close to 25% of its total customer base are smartphone users.
Mobile internet customers, which also comprise customers who use feature-phones, increased to 5.6 million from 5.4 million. Data revenue currently accounts for close to 31% of its total service revenue in the first nine months of the current financial year.
“We had committed to invest between RM700 and RM750 million this year as part of our network modernisation programme to cater to the increased demand from data users. We are currently at the halfway point of rolling out our modernised Tomorrow Network. Our ambition is to provide access to high-speed internet and next-generation services for all our customers, and in the first nine months of 2012 we have pushed harder than ever to make data accessible and affordable to everyone on a mobile device, and meet our customers’ demand for high quality mobile internet experience,” its chief executive officer Henrik Clausen said.
“Over the past three months we have prioritised our resources on driving continuous quality improvements in our new network and expanding our 3G coverage. This will remain a core focus as we continue to upgrade our network. In addition, we have also invested significantly in strengthening our retail presence to enable better access to mobile internet for more customers, and enhance the customer experience across our touch-points. All this will enable us to capture a bigger piece of the mobile internet and broadband market in the long-term,” Clausen said.
In Q3, DiGi added 75k new customers of which 67k are new prepaid customers and 8k are new postpaid customers. Its total subscriber base currently stands at 10.3 million.
DiGi announced that it will pay a third interim tax-exempt dividend of 4.0 sen per ordinary share and a one-off special tax-exempt dividend of 8.0 sen for the financial year ended 31 December 2012. The special dividend will be paid from proceeds of the two previously announced capital management initiatives and with this payment, DiGi will have completed the entire cash payout of this capital management initiative.
