Japan's KDDI has reported a 4.9% increase in net profit for the first half of its 2018-19 financial year to 345.5 billion yen ($3.05 billion).
The operator has announced it is ahead of its targets for profitability for the full financial year, having achieved 55.7% of its goal of 620 billion yen.
Revenue for the quarter grew 1.9% year-on-year to 2.46 trillion yen, but this represents only 47.8% of the full year target of 5.15 trillion yen.
Revenue from KDDI's domestic business au declined 2.9% to 432.9 billion yen as a result of the introduction of its new au Pittato Plan, which introduces a flat rate charge in five stages based on data usage. The stages of the plan range from 1,920 yen per month for 1GB to 5,480 yen for 20GB.
But au's churn rate fell from 0.79% at the end of the second quarter of FY18 to 0.64% at the end of the second quarter of FY19, and mobile subscriptions increased 2.4% year-on-year to 26.7 million, suggesting that the plan is having the desired effect on customer growth and retention.
Revenue growth was instead driven by new growth areas including value added services (up 15.4 billion yen), business services (up 6.2 billion yen), ad global services including its telecoms businesses in Myanmar and Mongolia (up 6.7 billion yen).