Grameenphone, the largest mobile operator in Bangladesh, reported strong gains in subscriber additions and data revenue in Q2, but falling ARPU slowed service revenue growth.

Its net profit for the quarter jumped 36.3 per cent year-on-year to BDT10.8 billion ($128 million). The increase included one-off reversals of excess tax provisions of BDT2.9 billion and accelerated depreciation for its network modernisation plan.

Service revenue rose 2.8 per cent from Q2 2017 to BDT32 billion, with data revenue increasing 18.5 per cent to BDT6.1 billion and voice revenue growth continuing with a 1 per cent rise.

Michael Patrick Foley, CEO of Grameenphone, said: “First half of 2018 was challenging due to adverse effect from bad weather and ongoing competition intensity. Despite this we were able to report healthy growth and margins.”

“We crossed the 2 million 4G subscriber milestone, and our network rollout as well as modernisation plan is on track to deliver superior customer experience. Our consolidated voice and competitive data offers are creating positive traction in the market.”

Grameenphone said rainfall was up 37 per cent from the same period of 2017, with an increase in thunderstorms leading to more power cuts. It experienced more than two-times the number of outages over eight hours than 2017 and commercial disconnections at its sites were 24 per cent higher.

Brisk growth
The operator ended the first half of 2018 with 69.2 million subscribers, up 12.3 per cent from the same point in 2017. The number of data subscribers increased by 2.3 million in Q2 to 34.5 million, with the base increasing 27.7 per cent from end-June 2017.

Service ARPU fell by 8.6 per cent year-on-year to BDT156.

Capex rose 37.6 per cent to BDT4.47 billion. It ended June with more than 3,000 4G sites and nearly 13,000 3G sites.