Robi Axiata recorded growth in revenue, subscribers and ARPU in Q3, but rising costs associated with a network expansion weighed on profit.

Net profit fell to BDT292 million ($2.9 million) from BDT865 million in Q3 2021 and mobile revenue grew 6.7 per cent to BDT20.2 billion.

Acting CEO and CFO M. Riyaaz Rasheed stated “profitability remains subdued” due to higher capex, with a related increase in depreciation and amortisation costs “squeezing the profit margin”.

“Unfortunately, there is no alternative to this strategy if we want to increase the scale of our business”.

Its user base increased 2.6 per cent to 54.4 million, with LTE subscribers rising 4.9 per cent to 27.6 million. Data revenue rose 2.6 per cent to BDT7.8 billion.

ARPU was up 1.6 per cent to BDT129 and average data consumption 34.2 per cent to 5.7GB a month.

Robi added about 1,000 4G sites in the 12 months to end-September for a total of 15,219 and population coverage of 98.2 per cent.