Indonesia’s third largest operator XL Axiata cut its losses by 40 per cent in the January to September period compared with a year ago after its transformation agenda launched in April started to yield results.

For the first nine months of the year the operator’s net loss fell to IDR506 billion ($37.1 million) from IDR838 billion in 2014, which was due mainly to the impact of the stronger dollar. XL said that adjusting for the forex impacts, which led to a loss of IDR3.03 trillion, it would have reported a normalised net profit of IDR74 billion for the period.

Its Q3 EBITDA increased 10 per cent from a year ago to IDR2.2 trillion, but its EBITDA for the first nine months of the year was down 4 per cent to IDR6.07 trillion. Its EBITDA margin in Q3 was 38 per cent, up 2 points from Q3 2014.

XL president director Dian Siswarini said the improvement was a result of its focus on more profitable subscribers as well as efforts to improve the profitability of the product portfolio.

But revenue for the January-September period was down 4 per cent to IDR16.98 trillion year-on-year. Voice revenue grew 2 per cent and data and VAS revenue rose 12 per cent. Other services, however, dropped 30 per cent as tower rentals fell sharply following the sale of its tower business Solusi Tunas Pratama last year.

Data traffic expanded 52 per cent, with total data users rising to 20 million or 49 per cent of its user base. Smartphone penetration has grown to 39 per cent.

XL has made a number of moves this year to pay down its debt early and convert $580 million in unhedged dollar-denominated debts to rupiah. Its overall debt dropped to IDR27 trillion from INR30.4 trillion as of 30 September and it has fully hedged its remaining external US dollar loans until maturity, it said.