China Unicom nearly tripled its net profit for 2017 as the company achieved a turnaround from its profit slump in 2016.
Net profit for the year grew 192.5% to nearly 1.83 billion yuan ($289.47 million), which compared to a 94.1% decline in profit for the prior year to just 625 million yuan.
Excluding the net loss on asset disposal related to a fiber network upgrade, profit for 2017 grew 540.4% to 4 billion yuan.
Operating revenue for the year meanwhile grew 0.2% to 274.83 billion yuan, with service revenue up 4.6% to 249.01 billion yuan.
Mobile service revenue grew 7.9% to 156.44 billion yuan, ahead of the industry average by 2.2 percentage points, while mobile ARPU improved 3.5% year-on-year to 48 yuan.
Total 4G subscribers grew by 70.3 million to 174.9 million, while in the first two months of this year, the company reported net mobile additions of 5.67 million, up 214.7% year-on-year.
But fixed service revenue was largely flat in 2017 to 90.9 billion, with fixed broadband access revenue down 2.6% year on year to 42.7 billion despite a 1.3 million increase in subscribers to 76.5 million.
Meanwhile China Unicom revealed it expects its turnaround and its partnerships with Alibaba and Tencent through its mixed ownership reform pilot to help the company achieve an annual pre-tax profit growth of 68.7% through to 2020, the South China Morning Postreported.