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英文班
China Mobile, the world's largest wireless operator by subscribers, yesterday
re?ported the slowest growth in interim profit since the company listed in
1997.
It also warned that both margins and average revenue per user – a gauge
of profitability – would be under pressure as the number of new mobile
subscribers slowed down.
“Penetration is relatively high. We will still get many new users, but
the speed will slow. This is very normal. [And] we went from two operators to
three. So of course competition is stronger,” said Wang Jianzhou, chairman. “But
China Mobile is not a utility company completely. We are still growing.”
For the first six months of 2009, net income was Rmb55.3bn ($8bn), up 1.4
per cent from Rmb54.1bn a year ago. Revenues rose 8.9 per cent from Rmb195.5bn
in 2008 to Rmb212.9bn this year.
China Mobile has been slowly losing ground to smaller rivals since the
government restructured the sector last year. Beijing allowed China Telecom to
compete with China Mobile and China Unicom in the wireless market, and awarded
third-generation telecoms licences to the trio.
China Mobile, which in December was still signing up nine out of 10 new
mob?ile users in the country, has seen its share of monthly net new subscribers
drop to 60 per cent in June. The company added 35.9m customers in the first
half, bringing the total to 493m.
Subscribers are also paying less. China Mobile said average revenue per
user was Rmb75 a month in the first half of this year, down from Rmb84 a year
ago.
The operating margin (measured by earnings before interest, taxes,
depreciation and amortisation divided by revenues) fell from 53.2 per cent in
the first half of last year to 51.6 per cent in 2009.
“Our ebidta margin is considered very high in the global
telecommunications industry,” said Xue Taohai, chief financial officer. “But in
the long term, as competition intensifies and penetration rate rises, it won't
be possible for us to keep such a high margin.”
Duncan Clark, chairman of BDA China, the telecoms consultancy, said:
“China's telecom operators are among the more profitable telecom operators
globally, but they are becoming more ‘normalised' now.”
Analysts said China Mobile's main chance to stop margins eroding was more
aggressive cost-cutting especially in lower-margin rural services. “It's time
for some Indian-style innovation,” said Mr Clark, referring to examples such as
Bharti Telecom's decision to outsource some network management to Ericsson.
全球用戶數量最多的移動電話運營商中國移動(China Mobile)昨日發布了中期業績，其利潤增幅為該公司1997年上市以來的最低水平。
公司同時警告稱，隨著新移動用戶數量增長放緩，利潤率和衡量盈利能力的每用戶平均收入(ARPU)指標也將面臨壓力。
“市場滲透率相對較高。我們仍將獲得許多新用戶，但增速將放慢。這十分正常。(而)市場上的運營商從兩家變成了三家，所以競爭當然更加激烈，”公司董事長王建宙(Wang
Jianzhou)表示。“但中國移動不完全是一家公用事業公司。我們仍在不斷增長。”
2009年前6個月，中國移動股東應占利潤為553億元人民幣，較去年的541億元增長1.4%。營業額較2008年上半年的1955億元人民幣增長8.9%，至2129億元。
自中國政府去年重組電信行業以來，規模較小的競爭對手一直在慢慢侵蝕中國移動的市場份額。政府讓中國電信(China
Telecom)進入移動市場,與中國移動和中國聯通(China Unicom)競爭，并向這三大巨頭頒發了3G牌照。
去年12月時，中國移動仍能獲得90%的新移動用戶，但到今年6月，其每月凈增用戶的市場份額已降至60%。該公司今年上半年新增用戶3590萬戶，總用戶數量達到4.93億戶。
用戶話費支出也在減少。中國移動表示，今年上半年，公司每用戶每月平均收入為75元人民幣，低于一年前的84元。
2009年上半年，公司營業毛利率（扣除利息、稅項、折舊及攤銷之前的盈利）降至51.6%，低于去年上半年的53.2%。
“在全球電信業，我們的營業毛利率被認為是相當高的，”該公司財務總監薛濤海表示。“但從長遠來看，由于競爭加劇和市場滲透率的上升，我們不可能一直保持如此高的利潤率。”
電信咨詢公司BDA中國(BDA China)董事長鄧肯(Duncan
Clark)表示：“在全球范圍內，中國電信運營商的利潤率都比較高，但它們正變得更為‘正常'。”
分析師稱，中國移動阻止利潤率下滑的主要機會在于更積極地削減成本，特別是在利潤率較低的農村市場。“是進行一些印度式創新的時候了，”克拉克表示。他舉例稱，印度巴帝電信(Bharti
Telecom)就將一些網絡管理業務外包給了愛立信(Ericsson)。
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