Indonesia's PT Indosat has swung back to a first quarter net profit of 800.1 billion rupiah ($69.6 million), due largely to the sale of its stake in PT Tower Bersama Infrastructure.
The profit, which compares to a loss of 1.02 trillion rupiah a year earlier, was achieved despite a 4.7% drop in revenue for the quarter to 5.77 trillion rupiah.
Mobile revenues fell 2.1%, due to decreases in voice, SMS and interconnection revenue. Mobile ARPU fell 6.7% to 25,800 rupiah, while MoU declined 11.3% to 78.6.These declines were partly offset by increased data and VAS revenues.
The company had 59.7 million mobile customers by the end of the quarter, up from 59.6 million a year earlier.
Fixed voice revenues by contrast grew 1.6% year-on-year due to higher IDD revenue, and fixed data revenue increased by 10.4%.
Indosat's ebitda margin improved 5.4 percentage points to 45.2%. CEO Alexander Rusli commented that the company's ebitda margin held ground “despite a seasonally weaker first quarter and despite a slight decline in consolidated revenue.”
He said the operator plans to continue to focus on its network modernization program this year, and as a result expects its business performance to improve in the second half.
In March, Indosat sold its 5% stake in Tower Bersama for around 1.39 trillion rupiah. Indosat first acquired the 5% stake as part of the tower company's purchase of 2,500 towers from the operator.