China Telecom 2016 Revenue Hit CNY352.3 bn, Net Profit CNY18 bn

China Telecom released the 2016 financial report on March 21.

Its revenue achieves CNY352.3 billion with a 6.4 percent increase, service revenue rose 5.6 percent to CNY309.6 billion. Its emerging business accounted for 40 percent of service revenue, up over 5 percent compared with last year, and its structure has kept rapid optimization in 2016.

The company generated CNY95.1 billion in EBITDA with a 30.7 percent EBITDA margin. Its net profit hit CNY18 billion, and capital expenditure declined 11.3 percent to CNY96.8 billion, free cash flow CNY7.7 billion which grew enormously compared with the year before.

China Telecom adopted active market strategies in 2016, focusing on two basic services - 4G and fiber broadband and new fields including esurfing HD, esurfing pay, IoT, cloud & big data and Internet+, adhered to integration and innovation and comprehensively upgraded products. With all these, its development was a step up from previous.

China Telecom took its mobile user base to 215 million with 17.1 million adds, which captured 16.2 percent of the market share in China, up 0.7 percent from the end of 2015.

Its 4G subscribers doubled reaching 122 million with a 57 percent penetration rate, obtaining 16 percent of the market share. During the year, the telecom giant sold over 100 million 4G mobile phones, and more than 80 percent were all-network; a 130 percent net increase happened to its traffic data used in the whole year, and among this, 4G traffic data was up nearly threefold year-over-year. The average of 4G data traffic consumed per subscriber per month was about 1GB. The mobile Internet service revenue rose 43 percent year over year, driving the steady growth of ARPU; revenue brought by its mobile services increased by 10.5 percent.

China Telecom took its fixed broadband user base to 123 million which added 10.06 million, including 106 million FTTH subscribers, up by 35 million with a 86 penetration rate. The revenue its fixed broadband services brought rose 3.3 percent year-on-year, maintaining a sound growth momentum.