Singapore’s M1 grew its 1H14 net profit by 8.2% to S$86.7 million ($69.3 million), largely on the back of mobile data gains.
Service revenue grew 1.5% year-on-year to S$412.9 million, with mobile data accounting for 33.6% of service revenue – up 6.2 percentage points from a year earlier.
The operator ended the half-year with 2 million mobile customers. M1 added 32,000 postpaid customers, but its prepaid customer base fell by 130,000 due to new regulations lowering the number of SIMs one subscriber can have from 10 to three.
Postpaid ARPU stayed mostly flat at S$62.30, while postpaid mobile revenue grew 6.2% to S$293 million.
M1 estimates that its total mobile market share declined from 25.7% at the end of 1H13 to 24.6% as of April 2014.
The operator’s fiber subscriber base meanwhile increased to 94,000, but fiber monthly ARPU fell 12.3% year-on-year to S$41.80.
“In the second quarter, we launched several new high-speed fiber broadband services, including Singapore’s first 10Gbps broadband service on the national fiber network,” M1 CEO Karen Kooi said.
“We will further expand our managed service offerings with Unified Communications and Network Applications Services. This will be augmented by our cloud-based data center, which will be ready in the second half of 2014.”
M1 estimates that its capex budget will be around S$130 million in 2014. The company is also predicting “moderate growth” in post-tax profit for the year.