Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL), the country’s leading telecom and ICT services provider, has announced its financial results for the year ended December 31, 2019 at its Board of Directors’ meeting held in Lahore on February 11, 2020.
PTCL’s Board of Directors has declared a final cash dividend of 5% i.e. Re 0.50 per share, which is in addition to the interim cash dividend of 5% i.e. Re 0.50 per share. The total dividend for the year thus stands at 10% i.e. Re 1.00 per share.
PTCL Group’s revenue has shown a year-on-year (YoY) growth of 2.1% to reach Rs 129.5 billion. All Group companies have contributed positively towards this growth. Ufone continued its acquisition drive in 2019 to cross 23 million subscribers resulting in an improved market share. U Bank, a microfinance banking subsidiary of PTCL, has shown significant growth of 48% in its revenue over last year as a result of a rapid expansion in its branch network. PTCL Group posts operating profit and net profit for the year of Rs 6.7 billion and Rs 2.4 billion respectively. Decrease in profits is attributable to higher inflation, significant rupee devaluation, increase in interest rates and hike in power tariffs.
PTCL revenue of Rs 71.5 billion for the year is slightly higher than last year. PTCL’s flagship fixed broadband services posted a revenue growth of 5% YoY. Fiber-To-The-Home (FTTH), deployed in 11 major cities of Pakistan, has enhanced the value proposition of PTCL brand. The recent upgrade in its fixed line network infrastructure has enabled PTCL to significantly reduce customer complaints and offer high speed internet packages to its customers. In addition to the network upgrade, PTCL also took other customer centric initiatives like experience management, implementation of customer-care systems and adoption of related best practices. This year, PTCL has been recognized for its customer services at the 14th annual CEM Telecom Awards during the Telecom Global Summit held in London.
Corporate and Wholesale businesses continued their growth momentum from 2018 and have achieved 13% overall revenue growth by securing new and strategic ICT and cloud projects. PTCL has successfully maintained and expanded its market leadership in the IP bandwidth business. This expansion coupled with growth in VSAT has enabled PTCL to become the sole bandwidth provider for different cellular, LDI and local loop operators.
Wireless revenue for the year has declined on YoY basis due to strong competition by the cellular companies providing wireless data services. There is continued decline in voice revenues due to continued conversion of subscribers to OTT, cellular services and illegal/grey traffic termination resulting in declining voice traffic volumes.
PTCL’s operating profit for the year has decreased by 24% from last year. It remained under pressure mainly due to increase in operating cost on account of inflation, significant hike in power tariffs and currency devaluation. PTCL has posted a Net Profit after Tax of Rs 6.3 billion for the year, which is 14.5% lower than last year. Increase in non-operating income (net of finance cost), due to higher income on investments as a result of increase in interest rates and translation gain on forex denominated assets, has helped reduce the 24% decrease at operating profit level to 14.5% at the net profit level.
Through new initiatives like ‘Talks@PTCL’, ‘PTCL Safeer’ and ‘Digital Learning Hackathon’, PTCL was able to promote capacity building, knowledge sharing and thought leadership internally. Bridging the gap between youth and professionals, these programs offer learning from firsthand experience and success stories of industry experts. PTCL also launched a month-long campaign on Breast Cancer awareness that helped successfully clear misinformed perceptions associated with the disease. In collaboration with PNCA, PTCL and Ministry of IT & Telecom (MoITT), organized an art exhibition to show solidarity with Kashmir. As part of Clean Green Pakistan Movement, a comprehensive project was carried out to install state-of-the-art solar power systems that converted 700 PTCL facilities across Pakistan to solar solution in order to conserve energy and protect the environment.
