China’s Big Three Carriers Pocket USD5.6 Billion in First-Quarter Profit; 5G Users Hit 1.2 Billion
Fan Xuehan
DATE:  Apr 21 2023
/ SOURCE:  Yicai
China’s Big Three Carriers Pocket USD5.6 Billion in First-Quarter Profit; 5G Users Hit 1.2 Billion China’s Big Three Carriers Pocket USD5.6 Billion in First-Quarter Profit; 5G Users Hit 1.2 Billion

(Yicai Global) April 21 -- China’s three major telecoms operators, namely China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom, achieved steady growth in the first three months, raking in a combined net profit of CNY38.4 billion (USD5.6 billion), as the number of fifth-generation mobile network subscribers touches 1.2 billion and their digitization businesses go from strength to strength.

China Mobile logged a 9.5 percent jump in net profit in the first quarter from the same period last year to CNY28.1 billion (USD4.1 billion), while China Telecom posted a 10.5 percent increase to CNY8 billion and China Unicom reported a 11.2 percent surge to CNY2.3 billion, according to their latest earnings reports.

Revenue at China Mobile soared 10.3 percent over the period to CNY250.7 billion (USD36.4 billion), while China Telecom’s income advanced 9.4 percent to CNY129.8 billion and China Unicom’s by 9.2 percent to CNY97.2 billion (USD14.1 billion).

As the country’s fifth-generation mobile network continues to be extended, the number of users subscribing to 5G packages at China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom were 689 million, 283 million and 224 million respectively as of March 31.

The Big Three’s digitization operations are also doing well. China Mobile’s revenue from digital information convergence technology jumped 23.9 percent to CNY29.4 billion (USD4.2 billion), China Telecom’s earnings from industrial digitization surged 18.9 percent to CNY35 billion, while China Unicom’s cloud services soared 40 percent to CNY12.8 billion.

The telecoms operators are strong in data-related assets, and the strategic promotion of data services will likely beat market expectations, according to a recent research report by Guotai Junan Securities.

However, the market size of the three carriers’ fintech and cloud computing operations is relatively small considering the huge investment, the China Academy of Information and Communication Technology said earlier. The demand for industrial digitization is fragmented, diversified and specialized and the exploration of this market requires a lot of time and is costly. The sustainable growth in income from new businesses is still risky.

Editor: Kim Taylor

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Keywords:   China Mobile,China Unicom,China Telecom