China Telecom's Mobile Base Continues Fast Growth as Wireline Declines

China Telecom continues to ramp-up its mobile subscriber base, ending Q1 2010 with 65,450,000 mobile subscribers up by 9.36 million for the quarter. The average mobile service revenue per user per month (ARPU) for the first quarter primarily remained stable, while the average mobile minutes of usage per user per month (MOU) has slightly increased, as compared to that for the full year of last year.


However, due to this intensified mobile substitution and churn of its Personal Handyphone System (PAS) subscribers, China Telecom continued to record negative growth in its number of local access lines in service for the first quarter. It ended Q1 with 184.23 million local access lines in service, down by 4.3 million for the quarter.


Mobile voice usage is correspondingly expanding rapidly and will likely soon eclipse local access voice usage.


Services like Internet and data services, integrated information services continued its robust growth momentum, which effectively mitigated the impact of decline in the wireline voice services. The wireline broadband subscribers reached 55.84 million, representing a net addition of 2.38 million.


For Q1, the China Telecom Group reported operating revenues of RMB 52,712 million, representing an increase of 3.6% from the first quarter of last year. The profit attributable to equity holders of the Company was RMB 4,272 million, representing a decline of 9.1% from the first quarter of last year and an increase of 127.4% from the fourth quarter of last year. EBITDA (before CDMA network capacity lease fees) was RMB 22,796 million, an increase of 2.7% from the first quarter of last year and an increase of 22.7% from the fourth quarter of last year. EBITDA margin was 43.2%, representing a decline of 0.4 percentage points from 43.6% of the first quarter of last year and an increase of 8.5 percentage points from 34.7% of the fourth quarter of last year.
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