By: Staff Writer
Colombo (LNW): Sri Lanka Telecom has suffered a net loss of Rs. 2.1 billion at Group level in the second quarter of FY23 as against a profit of Rs. 1.96 billion a year ago.
At Company level the loss was Rs. 1 billion in comparison to a profit of Rs. 4.2 billion in 2Q of FY22.
For the first half, Group loss was Rs. 1.16 billion as against a profit of Rs. 4.6 billion. At Company level the loss was Rs. 401 million in comparison to a profit of Rs. 8.3 billion.
In a statement SLT said the 2Q loss was due to cost escalations and impairment of Long-Term Evolution (LTE) assets. SLT PLC staff costs account for 36.8% of Operating Costs.
The statement said while SLT PLC had 2.4% (Rs.400 million) revenue growth, Mobitel recorded 9.3% (Rs.1,066 million) de-growth during Q2 of FY23 compared to Q2 of FY22.
Group revenue, therefore, decreased by 2.8% (Rs.763 million) from Q2’22 to Q2 of FY23. SLT PLC revenue increase was driven by growth in Broadband, IPTV, and Enterprise revenue streams.
However, such increase was slowed down due to decrease in International Transit revenue (90.3%, Rs. 614 million) during Q2 of FY23,
SLT PLC revenue growth was primarily hindered due to delay in monetisation of fibre network and customer churn.
Revenue de-growth in Mobitel was due to significant decline in subscriber base. Subscriber base contracted by 1 million from June 2022 to June 2023.
Group Opex increased by 15.1% (Rs. 2,513 million) in Q2 of FY23 compared to corresponding quarter in previous year.
Group EBITDA dropped by 31.9% (Rs. 3,276 million) during Q2 of FY23 due to decrease in Mobitel EBITDA by 61.9% (Rs. 3,064 million).
Accordingly, Group Operating Profit, PBT and PAT were also decreased by 92.7% (Rs. 3,121 million), 161.3% (Rs. 6,039 million) and 208.0% (Rs. 4,076 million) respectively.
SLT Group’s revenue growth was stagnant for the 1st half of 2023 to record Rs. 52.7 million, a 0.4% degrowth compared to the same period last year. At a company level, SLT revenues grew by 6.4% to Rs. 34.6 billion for the 1st half of 2023.
