Investors yesterday dumped shares of China Unicom, the mainland's No 2 cellular carrier, after disappointing CDMA (code division multiple access) subscriber numbers.
The shares dropped 4.6 per cent to HK$7.25. The news also dragged down China Mobile, which fell 3.12 per cent to $23.25, on concerns Unicom will resort to tariff-cutting to fill its CDMA network capacity.
Unicom said on Wednesday that last month it signed up just 9,000 more users for CDMA services, bringing its user base to 448,000.
The news confirmed concerns that the company will not be able to meet its targets of seven million subscribers by the end of this year - five million for the listed company and the rest from the 13 provincial networks owned by the parent company.
Merrill Lynch analyst Francis Cheung, who forecast Unicom would attract three million CDMA users by the end of this year, said he would wait for this month's figure to come out before deciding whether to downgrade expectations.
DBS Vickers Securities analyst Wallace Cheung said that Unicom would only attract one million users by the end of this year.
