True Corporation Plc reported net profit of 5.4 billion baht in the fourth quarter last year and 2.3 billion in 2017, driven by record revenue and ebitda (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation), cost and productivity initiatives, and asset divestment to the Digital Telecommunications Infrastructure Fund (DIF).
The board of directors approved a dividend of 1 billion baht (0.031 baht per share).
True's consolidated 2017 service revenue grew more than 10% from 2016 to 97 billion baht due to significant growth of both the cellular and broadband businesses, while ebitda surged 59% from 2016 to reach 39.9 billion in 2017.
Excluding the effect of the asset divestment to DIF, ebitda grew 36% year-on-year to 34 billion baht. This, combined with corporate-wide cost and productivity initiatives, resulted in net income of 2.3 billion baht in 2017.
Kittinut Tikawan, True's president for commercial operations, said that in 2017, the group's cellular business outgrew its peers as it was the only operator recording positive net adds of 2.7 million, while the other two major players reported combined net subscriber losses of 2.8 million.
This drove TrueMove H's service revenue up 17.3% year-on-year, while the industry's revenue grew 5.7%, the highest yearly growth rate since 2014.
Attractive device-bundling and data campaigns continued to receive a positive response in both postpaid and prepaid segments.
True expanded its subscriber base to 27.2 million, of which 20.3 million were prepaid and 6.9 million were postpaid users.
TRUE shares closed Wednesday on the Stock Exchange of Thailand at 6.30 baht, unchanged, in trade worth 401.2 million baht.
