Malaysia-headquartered Axiata Group reported a strong rebound in its financial performance in Q2, with its profit more than doubling year-on-year despite increased losses from Idea Cellular in India.

The regional operator’s net profit increased to MYR479.1 million ($112 million) in Q2 2017 from MYR232 million in the same period of 2016, with consolidated revenue up 14 per cent year-on-year to MYR6.06 billion.

Axiata attributed the improvement to its overall operational performance in its six key markets. Despite intense competition across the region, Jamaludin Ibrahim, Axiata president and group CEO, said its mobile operating companies performed better than the industry average in their respective markets.

“The turnaround at Celcom and XL’s transformation strategy are showing encouraging signs. Our group-wide cost and capex optimisation programme, which we initiated at the end of 2016, has already delivered a savings [sic] of close to MYR600 million,” he said.

Axiata’s double-digit revenue growth was driven in part by an increase in data revenue, which accounted for 44.1 per cent of service revenue in the recent quarter compared with 32.3 per cent in Q2 2016.

H1 regional performance
Malaysia-based Celcom continued to stabilise during H1 2017, Axiata said, with post paid revenue rising 8.2 per cent year-on-year and moble data turnover increasing 29 per cent to account for 42 per cent of total revenue. However, overall revenue fell 3.4 per cent year-on-year to MYR3.2 billion due to a drop in voice and SMS revenue.

Revenue at XL in Indonesia, which is executing a transformation agenda, rose 8.3 per cent over H1 2016 to MYR3.6 billion. Data revenue jumped 76 per cent.

Sri Lanka-based Dialog’s mobile data revenue grew 44 per cent in H1, accounting for 20.5 per cent of total revenue. H1 revenue was up 9.8 per cent from a year ago to MYR1.3 billion.

With its expanded user base following a merger with Airtel in Bangladesh, Robi’s revenue increased 40 per cent to MYR1.78 billion.

Axiata said despite an aggressive industry price war in Cambodia, Smart’s data subscribers grew 10.4 per cent during H1 2017 to 3.6 million. Data revenue grew 52.5 per cent year-on-year, accounting for 50 per cent of total revenue. Total revenue rose 20 per cent to MYR615 million.

Figures released separately for Idea Cellular, which is in the process of merging with Vodafone India, show the business generated an INR6.1 billion ($96.3 billion) loss in calendar Q2 2017 – the operator’s fiscal Q1 2018 – as the operation continues to struggle in face of the aggressive price competition from new entrant Reliance Jio.

Outlook
Axiata’s forecast for the full year is revenue growth in the range of 9 per cent to 11 per cent, and a 7 per cent to 9 per cent increase in EBITDA. Ibrahim said it raised its 2017 capex guidance to MYR7.1 billion from MYR6.6 billion.

“We will also organically and inorganically continue to expand Edotco’s business to be in the world’s top ten tower company,” he said.

Edotco announced today it will partner with Dawood Hercules to acquire the tower assets of Pakistan Mobile Communications for $940 million.