StarHub hit the top band of a revised revenue guidance for 2022 and forecast continued gains this year, driven by mobile, entertainment and regional ICT services.

In a statement, CEO Nikhil Eapen explained the company made initial investments and non-recurring provisions which impacted its bottom-line in the short term, but are “necessary for us to accelerate growth” in the mid- to long-term.

The operator expects service revenue in 2023 to increase by 8 per cent to 10 per cent.

In H2 2022, net profit fell 34.6 per cent year-on-year to SGD53.2 million ($40.1 million) due to higher non-operating expenses stemming from impairment losses on legacy network asserts and heightened investments in transformation initiatives.

Revenue increased 18.7 per cent to SGD1.3 billion, boosted by acquisitions: without these, the figure was up 9.7 per cent.

Mobile revenue increased 11.1 per cent to SGD296.1 million on subscriber gains and a 10.3 per cent rise in post-paid ARPU to SGD32.

Post-paid subscribers rose 5.5 per cent to 1.6 million and prepaid 26.3 per cent to 591,000.

Average data usage rose to 14.4GB from 12.7GB.

Excluding revenue from acquisitions involving MyRepublic Broadband and JOS, broadband sales increased 2.9 per cent to SGD101.3 million and enterprise 9 per cent to SGD406 million.

Paid-TV turnover rose 27.1 per cent to SGD119.9 million.