Celcom Axiata reported another profitable quarter
Filed Under (Business News) by Webmaster on 02-03-2010
Tagged Under : Celcom Axiata
Celcom Axiata Bhd registered a profit after tax and minority interests (Patami) of RM412mil in the fourth quarter ended Dec 31, a 22.6% increase compared with RM336mil in the previous corresponding period.
This marks its 15th consecutive quarter of positive growth.
It posted a revenue of RM1.7bil in the quarter compared with RM1.47bil previously.
“The growth was mainly driven by our segmentation marketing, restructured sales and distribution systems, improvement in network and customer services and the improving performance in the group,” chief executive officer Datuk Seri Shazalli Ramly told a press conference after the company’s result briefing yesterday.
He said Celcom planned to sustain its current momentum and continue exceeding its industry average growth in all key areas of its business, including retail, corporate and young segment.
“The year 2010 marks the start of our transformation period towards being a company with high performing culture. In the coming quarters, we will be focusing on various areas and benchmark ourselves against the industry locally and internationally.”
He said the enterprise segment held huge potential amidst the economic slowdown and Celcom intended to drive the business deeper.
Its holdings company, Axiata Bhd, will announce the key performance indicator for 2010 in April.
“We plan to spend RM900mil to RM1bil capital expenditure (capex) this year, compared with RM780mil last year, from internally-generated funds,” he said.
He said a large portion of expenditure last year was used to build up the infrastructure but the company would spend 40% of its capex this year on network infrastructure, especially in 3G, and the rest in areas like business intelligence and new billing systems.
For the financial year ended Dec 31 (FY09), the company posted a Patami of RM1.5bil, a 19% increase from FY08. Its revenue increased 12.8% to RM6.3bil.
Its average revenue per user for 2009 fell from RM106 to RM103 for the postpaid segment compared with 2008 while the prepaid segment dropped 8.6% to RM43.
On the possibility of Celcom offering iPhone, Shazalli said: “We do have a choice and we will evaluate it carefully as we need to make sure all the support levels are in place if we want to bring in iPhone.”
The company had actually discussed with Apple two years ago but nothing had been concluded, he said, adding that it would currently focus on promoting its Blackberry products.
