Telekom Malaysia's Q3 profit fell 20% to 240.88 million ringgit ($74.7 million), but the company turned in an otherwise robust set of quarterly earnings.
Excluding the impact of forex losses and higher tax expenses, net profit would have grown 32.4% to 270.3 million ringgit.
Revenue for the quarter grew 9.9% to 2.5 billion ringgit. The operator attributed the growth to a higher contribution from internet and data services – internet and multimedia services revenue grew 14.1% year-on-year, while data services revenue was up 17%.
During the quarter, Telekom Malaysia increased its broadband subscriber base by 7.7% year-on-year to 2.18 million.
The company also revealed that the fiber network it is deploying under the state-led High Speed Broadband (HSBB) initiative has now been rolled out to nearly 1.5 million premises covered by 103 exchanges.
Subscribers to the company's own UniFi fiber services meanwhile swelled 42.2% year-on-year to 607,000.
For the first nine months of the year, Telekom Malaysia's revenue grew 6.5% to 7.6 billion ringgit, while pre-tax profit grew 1.8% to 273.4 million. But net income again declined on forex losses and higher tax expenses.
Based on current circumstances and barring unforeseen circumstances, the Telekom Malaysia board said it expects the company's growth prospects for the full year to “remain positive.”