Singapore's M1 grew its net profit for the quarter ending in March by 6.6% despite nearly flat revenue growth.
The operator reported a first quarter profit of S$45.7 million ($33.7 million), on the back of a 0.2% increase in service revenue to S$204.4 million.
Growth in mobile and fixed service revenue offset a decline in international call services revenue, M1 said.
Non-voice revenue meanwhile grew to account for 52% of service revenue, up 6.9 percentage points year-on-year. Contributing to this was an increase in postpaid smartphone data usage to 3.2GB per month, up from 2.8GB a year ago.
During the quarter, M1 added 8,000 new postpaid customers and 10,000 prepaid customers, bringing its total mobile base up to 1.87 million. M1 also added 5,000 new fiber subscribers to take its total to 108,000.
“Even as we see continued growth in data usage, we will make further investment in talent and new technology platforms to enable smart solutions on our network. This will position us well to capture further growth and participate in the smart nation initiative,” M1 CEO Karen Kooi said.
Based on the current economic outlook, M1 is forecasting “moderate growth” in net profit for the full year 2015.