Philippines mobile operator Globe Telecom posted strong growth across most of its business lines and a sharp increase in its net profit in Q3 thanks to a one-time equity gain.

The operator’s net profit increased 78 per cent year-on-year during the quarter to PHP4.89 billion ($95.7 million), on revenue of PHP33.9 billion, up 9.4 per cent. Globe said most of the profit increase was due to a gain related to its interest in Globe Fintech Innovation, which offset equity losses and spectrum amortisation costs from the acquisition of San Miguel Corp’s telecoms assets, along with higher interest expenses and depreciation charges.

Mobile service revenue rose 9.8 per cent to PHP24.8 billion in Q3, accounting for 77 per cent of consolidated service revenue. The growth was driven by a 20 per cent increase in mobile data, which offset a 4 per cent decline in voice revenue and a 1.8 per cent fall in SMS sales. Mobile data accounted for 44 per cent of mobile service revenue.

Fixed line and broadband turnover increased 5 per cent year-on-year to PHP7.44 billion.

Globe’s subscriber base dropped 9 per cent from Q3 2016 to 59.3 million at end-September, with prepaid accounting for the majority of the loss as it took steps to remove inactive SIMs (not reloaded within 90 days). Its prepaid base declined 10 per cent to 56.8 million, while post paid subs dipped 1 per cent to 2.47 million.

Blended ARPU grew 16 per cent from Q3 2016 to PHP138 in the recent quarter. Post paid ARPU increased 5.8 per cent to PHP1,120.

Capex for the first nine months of the year was PHP36.8 billion, which is about the same level as all of 2016. The operator added 870 LTE sites between January and end-September.