BEIJING: People walk past a China Unicom office building in Beijing yesterday. The company’s net profit attributable to shareholders for the first quarter fell 86 percent year on year to 146 million yuan (US$22.6 million), it said in a statement filed with the Shanghai Stock Exchange.
The massive decline was mostly due to a 16 percent rise in marketing expenses and a 37 percent increase in network operational costs, such as spending on communications towers, power and rent, the telecom giant said.
Despite the poor quarterly performance, the profit slump was a significant improvement on the 1.5 billion yuan loss reported for the previous three months.
