Singapore Telecommunications, Southeast Asia’s biggest phone company, posted a 9.6% fall in third-quarter earnings on costs to retain domestic customers and a slump at its Bharti Airtel unit in India, reported Bloomberg.
Net income fell to $902 million, or 5.7 cents a share, in the three months ended Dec. 31 from $998 million, or 6.3 cents a year earlier, SingTel, as the Singapore-based company is known, said in a statement today. The result missed the $951.5 million average of four analysts’ estimates compiled by Bloomberg.
SingTel’s margin, which measures profit as a proportion of sales, shrank 1.3 percentage points to 26% as selling and administrative expenses in Singapore surged 22% on higher costs to add and retain customers. Competition in Australia is curbing growth for its Optus unit and sliding earnings at part-owned Bharti are crimping profitability.
“The big disappointment here is the change in the cost structure and the decline in its margin,” said Theo Maas, who holds SingTel among the US$5 billion ($6.3 billion) he helps manage at Arnhem Investment Management Pty. in Sydney. “They have been quite aggressive in terms of handset subsidies.”
SingTel’s Australian traded shares fell 1.8% to A$2.25 ($3.03) at 11:03 a.m. in Sydney, extending this year’s decline to 4.6%.
No comments:
Post a Comment