Singapore's M1 grew its net profit for calendar 2014 by 9.7% year-on-year to S$175.8 million ($140.6 million) on the back of postpaid and mobile data gains.
Operating revenue grew 6.8% to S$1.08 billion, driven by higher handset sales. Service revenue was up 1.4% to S$831.1 million, thanks to higher revenue from mobile data as well as an increase in postpaid and fixed-line customers.
M1 ended 2014 with 1.85 million mobile customers, including 1.15 million postpaid subscribers – an increase of 19,000 from 2013.
But the operator's prepaid customer base was negatively impacted by regulatory changes introduced early last year prohibiting the registration of SIMs to subscribers under 15 years old, and capping the number of prepaid SIMs that can be allocated to one subscriber at 10.
M1 also added 18,000 fiber subscribers during the year, taking its total up to 103,000.
M1 CEO Karen Kooi said that based on the current economic outlook, M1 is forecasting a moderate growth in net profit for 2015.
“Faster network and devices will drive data usage in 2015,” Kooi said.
“In December 2014, we launched Singapore's first next-generation 4G [LTE-A] network, enabling download speed of up to 300Mbps. We will continue to invest in our networks to improve the customer experience.”