The country’s largest mobile phone operator Grameenphone earned Tk2,520 crore revenue during first three months this year with a marginal 1% growth year-on-year.
The operator released the latest figures at a press conference yesterday.
The data showed the revenue dropped by 2.9% from that in the last quarter of 2014.
The operator’s revenue earning was Tk2,492 core in first quarter of 2014 and Tk2,590 in the last quarter.
Grameenphone reported Tk2,620 crore revenue in second quarter of 2014 and Tk2,560 crore in the third quarter.
Chief Executive Officer of Grameenphone Rajeev Sethi said they had to fight against adverse political situation in the country during the January-March quarter.
But their commitment to the goal enabled them to improve performance in the later part of the period, he added.
Chief Financial Officer Dilip Pal also spoke at the press conference.
He said the revenue from services also increased by 0.8% year-on-year.
Growth in service revenue was mainly driven by data and VAS. The data revenue grew by 67.9% along with 37.2% growth of VAS.
The net profit after tax for the quarter was Tk540 crore with 21.3% margin compared to Tk520 crore with 20.7% margin of the corresponding period of 2014.
Efficiency in operating expenditure management resulted in higher growth in EBITDA (before other items) of 2% compared to revenue. EBITDA margin also saw an improvement to 54.2%.
Earnings per share (EPS) for the period stood at Tk3.96 compared to Tk3.82 of the first quarter of 2014.
During the quarter, GP acquired half a million new subscriptions, taking the year-end subscription base to 52m. This constitutes 6.8% subscription growth (YoY) with SIM market share of 42%.
Data subscriber number stood at 11.0m with encouraging volume growth.
“We’ve had a rough start to the year due to political turmoil and intense competition. However, we stood strong and committed to ourambition against this headwind and we have seen signs of improvement in the later part of the period,” said Rajeev Sethi.