China Telecom results down 7.3pc year on year
Network giant's third-quarter earnings down 7.3pc from last year
China Telecom, the world's biggest fixed-line network operator, reported a fall in net profit of 7.3 per cent for the third quarter from a year earlier, hit by increasing costs and subsidies on mobile phones to attract subscribers.
Net profit dropped to 3.75 billion yuan (HK$4.61 billion) while revenue rose 16 per cent to 72 billion yuan from the year-earlier quarter.
The latest quarter brought profit for the first nine months to 12.6 billion yuan, down 8 per cent from the year-earlier period, while revenue was up 15 per cent to 210 billion yuan.
The company joined China Unicom in March in offering Apple's iPhone on the mainland, in the hope of luring quality users in a market that is already saturated.
"Following the launch of iPhone to expand the high-end market during the period, the group made an appropriate increase in marketing initiatives for the profitable scale development of its mobile services," the company said in a filing to the Hong Kong stock exchange. It said that while it expected to enhance its long-term sustainable growth, "short-term pressure on profitability" would result.
The Beijing-based company has reported successive quarterly profit declines since it began offering iPhones in March.