Robi earned Tk 1.2 crore in profit in the second quarter of the year driven by data revenue growth, but the profit was far below than that of the first quarter. The second-largest mobile phone operator in Bangladesh logged Tk 11.5 crore in profit in the January-March quarter.
The fall in profit is largely attributed to the direct effect of the increase in minimum turnover tax to 2 percent from 0.75 percent.
However, according to the new accounting practice of its parent Axiata Group, Robi incurred a loss of Tk 32.2 crore in the April-June quarter. Axiata implemented the IFRS 16, an international financial reporting standard promulgated by the International Accounting Standards Board, in January that affected their balance sheet.
Robi’s earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation stood at Tk 662.6 crore in April-June with 35.6 percent margin without considering the financial implications of implementing IFRS 16.
The operator’s revenue grew 12.4 percent to Tk 1,858.7 crore compared to the same quarter a year ago and 6.1% higher than last quarter. Data revenue was up 28.9 percent. The subscriber base expanded by 7.2 percent year-on-year to 4.79 crore at the end of June, representing 29.6 percent of the market share.
At the end of June, 3.1 crore subscribers were data users, accounting for 62.8 percent of its subscriber base.
Although the operator registered healthy growth in revenue in this quarter, the revised tax regime has emerged as an even bigger obstacle than the market-related challenges.
The operator showed it’s concern on the doubling of SIM tax and the increase of supplementary duty which they fear will further add to the financial woes as a struggling smaller operator.
Robi also had already built 8,080 sites enabled to provide 4G services, covering 3.01 crore of its subscribers.
The operator contributed Tk 679.7 crore to the government exchequer in Q2, which amounted to 35.6 percent of its total revenue in the quarter.
Earlier, Robi declared profit in last quarter of January – March after several quarter of registering loss since its merger with Airtel and intense competition in the last couple of years .
