KUALA LUMPUR: Telekom Malaysia Bhd (TM) is targeting up to four per cent revenue growth for the financial year ending December 31 2017, from RM12.06 billion revenue recorded last year, despite an increasingly challenging business environment.
Its group chief executive officer Tan Sri Zamzamzairani Mohd Isa said revenue growth this year would be driven by its existing businesses and the materialisation of some returns on investment, especially from mobile service provider webe and the long-term evolution (LTE) rollout.
“We always look at improving what we already have today, while at the same time investing in the future. As you clearly see in terms of UniFi, the upgrades and average revenue per user increase, it has continued to grow and we expect that to continue to improve.
“We started investing in webe and LTE two years ago. So, we do expect to start getting returns from these investments,” he said at a briefing on TM’s financial results, here, yesterday.
TM group chief financial officer Datuk Bazlan Osman said the company plans to spend about 30 per cent capital expenditure (capex) this year on LTE rollout, high-speed broadband and sub-urban broadband projects, as well as the East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe 5 submarine cable project.
Last year, TM allocated capex of RM3.3 billion, or 27.5 per cent of its revenue.
For the 2016 financial year, net profit grew 10.8 per cent to RM776.03 million from RM700.28 million in the previous year due to other gains, lower foreign exchange losses on group borrowings and recognised tax incentives.
TM’s revenue increased 2.9 per cent to RM12.06 billion from RM11.72 billion in the same period previously, mainly due to higher revenue from Internet and multimedia, other telecommunication-related services, data and non-telecommunication related services.
In the fourth quarter, TM’s net profit shrank 19.8 per cent to RM154.31 million from RM192.43 million, from the impact of higher unrealised foreign exchange loss and accelerated depreciation of Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access assets.
Its revenue in the same quarter increased 1.7 per cent to RM3.24 billion from RM3.18 billion.
TM has declared a second interim single-tier cash dividend of 12.2 sen a share amounting to RM458.5 million. Together with the first interim dividend of 9.3 sen per share amounting to RM349.5 million, which was paid in October last year, the total dividend payout is 21.5 sen per share, or RM808 million.