Indonesia’s PT Indosat narrowed its net loss for 2014 by 28.6% to 1.98 trillion rupiah ($153.2 million), and the company is confident of returning to profitability this year.
Revenue for the year grew by a slim 1% to 24.08 trillion rupiah, with cellular revenue up 0.5% to 19.48 trillion rupiah. Increased data and VAS revenue compensated for declines in voice, SMS and interconnection revenue.
The company’s mobile customer base reached 63.2 million by the end of the year with the company adding 9 million subscribers in the fourth quarter alone.
Total data traffic climbed 179.7% in 2014 to 85,358 terabytes. By contrast, cellular ARPU declined 1.5% over the year to 27.2 rupiah, while minutes of use fell 15.7% to 78.4.
Fixed data revenues increased by 7.4%, driven by growth in transponder, IPVPN and MPLS customers. But fixed voice revenues decreased by 9.8% due in part to lower IDD revenues.
“Demand for telecommunications services in Indonesia stayed strong during the year but so did competition, with a trend shifted toward data services,” Indosat CEO Alexander Rusli said.
“Having concluded year 2014 on an upbeat note during the 2nd half, the main challenge and opportunity will be to optimally leverage the newly modernized network.”
An Indosat spokesperson toldthe Jakarta Post that the operator is confident it will return to the black this year, thanks to its recent network upgrade and debt refinancing.