Financial conditions of cellular companies in Pakistan seems to be unstable as most of cellular companies are operating in loss despite significant increment in their revenues over the time; but these revenues are leveled by increased operating expenses, network expansion and depreciation i local currency.
Operating expanses of cellular companies have increased due to inflation and depreciation of Pakistani currency. This depreciation in currency is effecting cellular companies in two ways, first the cost of machinery and infrastructure gets higher, secondly those companies that depend on foreign loans from sources outside Pakistan bear huge loss due to depreciation of currency.
The remaining fire was fanned by increased taxes and ongoing price war in the industry. Despite all these, increase in revenues has comforted companies to some extent, but still they will have to go a long way to become profitable.
Revenues generated by cellular companies increased by 35 % compared to 48 % last year. Telenor has outperformed all other companies in terms of revenue generation, which has increased its revenues by 97 percent in 2007/08 compared to last year. Telenor reported total of Rs. 45 billion revenues this year.
Total Revenues By Cellular Companies (Rs. Millions)
Company | 2004-05 | 2005-06 | 2006-07 | 2007-08 |
Mobilink | 34,456 | 54,065 | 64,654 | 79,936 |
Ufone | 8,599 | 16,098 | 21,867 | 27,455.2 |
CM Pak | 2,400 | 3,329 | 2,897 | 25,85.3 |
InstaPhone | 2,693 | 1,539 | 472 | 259.7 |
Telenor | 565 | 6,338 | 22,837 | 45,081.2 |
Warid Telecom | 168 | 8,527 | 20,405 | 26,804.7 |
Total | 48,881 | 89,896 | 133,132 | 182,080.9 |
Mobilink earned about Rs. 80 billion revenues, which is 24 percent higher than of previous year. It is noted that Telenor and Mobilink share 70 percent of total revenues of the undustry, while 29 percent is shared between Ufone and Warid Telecom.
Average Revenue per User
Despite huge additions in customers, ARPU (Average Revenue Per user) has declined by 3 percent from 3.2 US Dollar last year to 3.1 US Dollar this year.
Cellular Mobile ARPU (US$)
Mobilink | Ufone | CMPak | Instaphone | Telenor | Warid | Total | |
2006-07 | 3.8 | 2.8 | 3.3 | 2.1 | 4.0 | 2.5 | 3.2 |
2007-08 | 3.5 | 2.1 | 1.6 | 0.9 | 3.9 | 2.7 | 3.1 |
Investment
During 2007-08 Cellular companies invested over US 2.3 billion dollar, which is 12 percent lower than the previous year. Mobilink topped the chart with 919 million dollars invested, while Telenor invested around US 565 Million dollars.
Source: PTA’s Annual Report – Stats are as of July 2008