China Unicom said its net profit surged 47% last year, thanks to strong growth from its 3G business.
Net profit for the 12 months ended December 31 rose to 10.41 billion yuan ($1.7 billion) from 7.10 billion yuan in 2012. Operating revenue increased 18.5% to 295.04 billion yuan, compared to the 248.93 billion yuan in the previous year.
Mobile business continues to see rapid growth, with revenue rising 19.9% to 151.13 billion yuan, thanks to strong growth in 3G service, which has become the largest revenue contributor to the company.
Unicom's 3G service revenues jumped 50.2% to 89.80 billion yuan, accounting for 59.4% of mobile service revenue. 3G subscribers rose 60.4% to 123 million, representing 43.6% of the company’s over 280 million mobile subscribers at year end.
Yet 3G ARPU fell to 75.1 yuan for the year of 2013 from 86.1 yuan in 2012. Blended ARPU (2G and 3G) for all subscribers was 48.2 yuan, up from 47.9 yuan a year earlier.
President and executive director Lu Yiming said the company is confident that it could stabilize the 3G ARPU this year at the same level as that of last year.
The company will launch TD-LTE service in 25 major cities next month with nationwide commercial service scheduled by December. The 4G launch, Lu noted, will help the company gain more market share in the intensified mobile market and maintain the ARPU level.
Despite that, Lu said capex this year will not exceed the 80 billion yuan that spent in 2013, and the company will maintain the same ratio of smartphone subsidies from last year. Unicom spent nearly 7.8 billion yuan on handset subsidies last year, up 27.8% from a year earlier.