Thailand’s Dtac has revealed that its net profit for the first quarter declined 30.6% year-on-year to 2.3 billion baht ($70.4 million) despite strong subscriber growth.
The operator reported revenue for the quarter of 22.88 billion baht, up 1.9% year-on-year but down 9.5% sequentially.
Dtac added 155,000 post-paid subscribers and 263,000 pre-paid customers during the quarter, taking its total base up to 28.4 million.
The company also increased the proportion of customers subscribed to its 2100-MHz 3G/4G network to 83%, or 23.5 million users.
Just over half (52%) of the company's total subscriber base were smartphone users by the end of the quarter. Data revenues meanwhile reached 7.5 billion baht, or 44% of service revenues.
As of the end of the quarter, Dtac also boasted nearly 1 million LTE customers. The operator expects this to grow to 2.5 million by the end of the year.
To help improve data monetization, Dtac is introducing limited data price plans as well as a new postpaid package price plan.
Looking ahead to the full year, Dtac said it expects a low single digit growth in service revenues and an ebitda margin in line with the previous year. Dtac anticipates a total capex budget for 2015 of 18-20 billion baht.