Telenor Pakistan has announced a flat first quarter of 2018 as revenues slowed down during the start of the year, but it expects more promising trends in March 2018.
The company said that it generated a total revenue of Rs. 25.13 billion during the first three months of 2018, just below the Rs. 25.16 billion revenue it had reported during the same period last year.
The company said that removal of data tax exemption in one of the provinces last year contributed negatively to the reported growth numbers.
Telenor Pakistan said that it added 1 million customers (that is a 6% growth as compared to last year) during the quarter, however, subscription and traffic revenues increased by just 2%.
Country’s second largest telco said that its traffic revenues were largely impacted by a 4% decline in ARPU. Data revenues — on the other hand — continued to support growth and adjusted for the negative impact of data tax exemption.
Telenor Pakistan ARPU – for Prepaid customers only
Total revenues were also impacted due to a decline in international interconnect traffic and lower handset sales.
Telenor continued to execute its efficiency initiatives that grew opex by 1%. Adjusted for reversal of accruals last year, opex decreased by 3%. The EBITDA margin was 48%.
Telenor, in its financial report, said that Capex was prioritized towards expanding the 4G network footprint with its 4G network now reaching 41% of the population in the country.
More details can be seen in the financial highlights below for the reported period:
Despite the lapse of considerable time after acquiring of 4G license no full coverage in many parts of Peshwar. Zong is best here in Peshawar
Not only coverage lacks but quality also. Telenor’s voice quality has gone down rapidly. Distortion, weak connections and low voice quality is very common now with Telenor. They must focus on basics first