(Yicai Global) March 24 -- Shares in China Mobile tumbled both on the mainland and in Hong Kong today even though the country’s largest telecoms operator logged a respectable increase in profit and revenue in 2022 and the chairman said the firm is on course to achieve record earnings this year.

China Mobile’s share price on the mainland [SHA:600941] closed down 2.7 percent at CNY90.86 (USD13.22). Earlier in the day it slumped 5.3 percent to CNY88. While its Hong Kong-traded stock [HKG:0941] was trading down 1.6 percent at HKD62.60 (USD8) as of 3:13 p.m. China time. Earlier in the day it sank 2.8 percent to HKD61.85.

The state-backed carrier’s net profit climbed 8 percent in 2022 from the year before to CNY125.5 billion (USD18.3 billion), according to the Beijing-based company’s latest annual report released yesterday. Revenue soared 10.5 percent to CNY937.3 billion (USD136.9 billion).

China Mobile is expecting to rake in all-time-high revenue of over CNY1 trillion (USD146.1 billion) this year and will continue growing in the coming two or three years, said Yang Jie.

Revenue from digital transformation soared 30.3 percent last year from the year before to CNY207.6 billion (USD30.3 million), thanks to the fast expansion of fifth-generation technology applications as well as mobile cloud, digital content and smart home services, it said. And revenue from communication services jumped 8.1 percent to CNY812.1 billion.

China Mobile has strong advantages in data and artificial intelligence applications, and it has computing power networks with capabilities in natural language processing, deep learning and machine vision, Yang said.

China Mobile had 975 million customers last year, 63 percent of whom subscribed to 5G packages.

The other two state-backed carriers also did well last year. China Unicom logged an 8 percent jump in net profit from a year earlier to CNY125.5 billion (USD18.3 billion) while revenue advanced 8.3 percent to CNY354.9 billion. And China Telecom’s posted a 6.3 percent increase in net profit to CNY27.6 billion while revenue expanded 9.4 percent to CNY475 billion.

Editor: Kim Taylor