Singapore-based StarHub booked a profit gain in Q4 2020 despite a drop in mobile service revenue as ARPU and subscriber numbers were hit by continued Covid-19 (coronavirus) restrictions.

CEO Nikhil Eapen said 2020 was “clearly a challenging year” with strong Covid-19 headwinds. It is planning for a gradual recovery in 2021, with early signs of business demand picking up but an uncertain macroeconomic environment.

“We remained focused on our transformation to optimise and simplify our processes, evolve our cost and business models.”

The operator expects service revenue to remain stable, with higher contributions from its cybersecurity and regional ICT services units offsetting lower mobile revenue resulting from ongoing travel restrictions and a decline in pay-TV revenue due to an expected decline in subscribers and advertising revenue.

In Q4 net profit edged up 3.5 per cent from a year earlier to SGD36.1 million ($27.2 million), attributed to cost-cutting moves reducing total opex by a double-digit figure. Service revenue decreased 5.5 per cent SGD419.4 million.

Mobile service revenue declined 27.4 per cent to SGD138.6 million on lower roaming and ARPU, down 22.5 per cent to SGD31 for post-paid and 15.4 per cent to SGD11 for prepaid.

Post-paid subscribers decreased 2.6 per cent to 1.41 million and prepaid fell 27.5 per cent to 564,000.

Average monthly data usage rose 24.2 per cent to 12.3GB.