Singapore's M1 has reported an 11.5% decline in net profit for 2017 as higher expenses outweighed strong growth in fixed line revenue.
The operator posted an after-tax profit for the year of S$132.5 million ($100.6 million), with ebitda falling 3.1% for the year to S$302.4 million mainly due to higher handset losses.
But service revenue grew 2.8% over the same period to S$828.1 million, with fixed service revenue climbing 24.5% to S$129.7 million. As a result of this growth, fixed services grew to account for 15.7% of total service revenue, up from 12.9% a year earlier.
Mobile revenue by contrast increased by just 0.39% to S$642.6 million, and international call services revenue declined 8.8% to S$55.9 million.
For the fourth quarter, M1 reported service revenue of S$215.1 million, up 7% year-on-year. Fixed service revenue grew 33% year-on-year to S$36.1 million, while mobile revenue increased 4.1% to S$165 million.
During the quarter, the operator added 20,000 postpaid and 11,000 prepaid customers, taking its total mobile customer base to 2.04 million. Churn remained stable at 1.2%, while average postpaid data traffic grew to 4.3GB per month up from 3.6GB a year earlier.
Fiber customers meanwhile increased by 7,000 during the quarter to 189,000.
"As we transform to a Smart Communications Provider, we [plan to] progressively scale up our ICT capabilities and portfolio of digital services to capture opportunities in IoT and Smart Nation,” M1 CEO Karen Kooi commented.
“The digitalization will improve operational efficiency and enhance our customer touch-points, providing a seamless experience for digital natives and [the] tech-savvy segment.”