Maxis, the largest mobile operator in Malaysia, reported its highest quarterly profit in five years in Q3 on top of strong growth in post paid and LTE subscribers.

The company’s net profit for the quarter rose 8.3 per cent year-on-year to MYR562 million ($133 million), on total revenue of MYR2.22 billion, up 3 per cent from Q3 2016.

Service revenue increased 2 per cent to MYR2.16 billion driven by strong post paid growth. Post paid turnover grew 9.3 per cent to MYR1.06 billion as the company added about 120,000 customers to take the total to 2.8 million. Prepaid revenue fell 6 per cent to MYR955 million.

Maxis CEO Morten Lundal said Q3 2017 was “a very strong quarter”, noting record “high demand for data and our high quality network created an all-time high customer satisfaction score.”

Data adoption continued to grow at a rapid pace, with average LTE usage per customer rising to 7.4GB from 4.4GB per month from in the 2016 period. The number of LTE users increased from 4.1 million in Q3 2016 to 6 million at end-September.

The operator, with a 28.4 per cent market share (rival Digi had a 28.1 per cent share), lost 850,000 prepaid subscribers over the past year to end September with 7.15 million.

Blended ARPU rose to MYR59 at end-September from MYR56 in Q3 2016. Prepaid ARPU was steady at MYR43, while post paid rose slightly to MYR102.

The company invested MYR647 million in the first nine months of the year to take its LTE network coverage to 89 per cent of the population. Capex for the January to September period was down 13 per cent year-on-year.

For the full year Maxis forecast service revenue, EBITDA and capex to remain at similar levels to 2016.