KUALA LUMPUR – Celcom Axiata Bhd’s profit after tax and minority interest improved more than 100% for the first half ended June 30, 2022 (H1 2022) to RM542 million.
Its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation grew 13.0% to RM1.51 billion in H1 2022 driven by higher revenue and improved cost, supported by transformation and cost-saving initiatives.
Celcom’s revenue ex-device grew by 4.2% year-to-date to RM3.03 billion, driven by positive prepaid and postpaid subscriber growth with an additional 135,000 prepaid subscribers year-on-year by 2.2%.
Celcom chief executive officer Datuk Idham Nawawi said the private mobile network operator’s resilient performance was the result of its Operational Excellence Transformation focus to deliver to the market demand with attractive and affordable services while maintaining operational cost management.
“Our continuous and increased network investments to address the rapid data traffic growth and provide consistent network performance and the widest coverage, have resulted in a significant reduction in complaints as well as subscriber growth and profit,” he said in a statement today.
With encouraging revenue and subscriber growth, Idham said Celcom plans to reinvest in its ongoing network modernisation efforts, ensuring that its network reaches out to all societies, including remote areas in Sabah and Sarawak.
Celcom would also remain focused on delivering value through affordable product and service innovation, including strengthening its enterprise ICT service portfolio and convergence services, he added.
“We will continue to be a service provider that our customers and ecosystem can rely on,” said Idham.
Celcom’s postpaid revenue grew by 4.6% with 143,000 new subscribers year-on-year, driven by family and convergence packages and the return of roaming traffic.
Meanwhile, the company has invested more than RM1 billion over the past 18 months to cater for growth in the subscriber base and increasing demand for data connectivity services.
It said the investments included the deployment of new 4G LTE layers at almost 9,000 existing and new radio access network sites, including network core capacity upgrades and network optimisation activity, to enhance 4G services nationwide to cater to the increase of 14.5% in data traffic compared to the previous year.
Celcom said data utilisation per month per user increased by 6.0% in H1 2022, hitting 24.2GB per month per user against the same period a year earlier.
The company also improved overall service coverage and network experience, resulting in a 73% increase in average download speeds and a 44% reduction of complaints to date.
Together with the Jalinan Digital Negara programme, Celcom said it is committed to building and deploying 570 new 4G LTE network sites, upgrading over 700 sites with the latest LTE technology, and expand network coverage by deploying 670 LTE900 low band sites.
Supporting over 14 million users, Celcom’s 4G and 4G LTE-A population coverage stand at 96.21% and 90.20%, respectively.
The strong market momentum continued in H1 2022, with Celcom adding 278,000 subscribers over the year. – Bernama, September 11, 2022
