DHAKA: Bangladesh’s second largest mobile operator Robi incurred a net loss of Tk3.89 billion in 2016 mainly due to heavy costs lingering from its recent merger with Airtel.
Data coming from its parent company Axiata shows that although the mobile operator has been able to maintain very thin profit margins in the first three quarters of last year, it succumbed to a net loss of Tk4.27 billion in the last quarter as the merger process approached the network integration stage.
This is in stark contrast with Robi’s financial results in recent years. Back in 2012, the company posted a net profit of Tk919 million which catapulted to Tk3.65 billion in 2013 and Tk4.39 billion in 2014. Even in 2015, the company’s net profit stood at Tk4.04 billion.
Meanwhile, although Robi’s quarter on quarter revenue registered a meager 5.0 per cent growth to reach Tk14.6 billion amidst intense price competition, its operating profit (EBITDA) margin in 2016 was 27.2 per cent which is 9.2 percentage point lower than the previous year.
Robi and Indian mobile operator Airtel started talks about merging their Bangladesh operations back in September 2015. In January last year, the companies signed a merger deal in Kuala Lumpur. Afterwards, in August, the High Court cleared the way for the Robi-Airtel merger.
Later on November 20, Robi paid nearly Tk3.19 billion of its Tk4.27 billion fees to the telecom regulator while the remaining nearly Tk1.09 billion is expected to be paid in two installments.
Meanwhile, Robi’s year on year subscriber base increased by 19.5 per cent in 2016, mainly thanks to the merger and has reached 33.8 million by the yearend.
This gave the operator an estimated 26.9 per cent share of the total subscriber base of the country and also made it the second largest operator in the country after Grameenphone.
In the previous year, Robi also made a CAPEX investment of Tk20.3 billion to expand 2.5G/3.5G network, according to the mobile operator.
Total CAPEX investment made by Robi since its inception amounted to Tk182.6 billion– out of which, Tk7.4 billion CAPEX investment was made in the fourth quarter of last year.
In the fourth quarter of last year, the company contributed Tk8.5 billion to the government exchequer, representing 58.7 per cent of company’s revenue.
Since its inception in 1997, Robi has paid more than Tk178.8 billion to the government exchequer while remitting Tk2.9 billion dividends to its shareholders.
