China Mobile posted operating metrics that show a drop of 8.1 million mobile customers during the first two months of 2020. As of the end of December 2019, China Mobile hit a peak of 950, 277,000 mobile customers, and at the end of February, it had 942,261,000. The figure includes a drop in 4G customers and a gain in 5G customers. As of the end of February 2020, China Mobile had 15.40 million 5G customers
On March 19, China Mobile reported operating revenue of RMB745.9 billion for the 2019 financial year, up by 1.2% compared to last year. Of this, telecommunications services revenue amounted to RMB674.4 billion, or growth of 0.5% year-on-year. EBITDA was RMB296.0 billion, up by 7.4% from last year. EBITDA margin was 39.7%, up by 2.3 percentage points compared to the previous year.
Some highlights for 2019:
- Handset data traffic increased by 90.3% year-on-year and DOU (the average handset data traffic per user per month) was 6.7 GB.
- Mobile ARPU (average revenue per user per month) of RMB49.1
- The number of household broadband customers increased by 17.1% year-on-year and reached 172 million.
- The company activated more than 50,000 5G base stations and launched 5G commercial services in 50 cities.
- As of year-end, China Mobile had 3.09 million 4G base stations in operation
Mr. Yang Jie, Chairman of China Mobile, issued the following statement: “We were faced with a challenging and complicated operating environment in 2019 where the upside of data traffic was rapidly diminishing and competition within the telecommunications industry and from cross-sector players was becoming ever more intense. Coupled with this was the impact of government policies, including the continued implementation of the “speed upgrade and tariff reduction”…”
“In 2020, we will strive to overcome the impact of the novel coronavirus outbreak on business development and 5G network construction. The epidemic has bolstered the growing trend of businesses and customers going online and using more digital and cloud-based services, among other opportunities arisen. We will leverage these opportunities, as well as the 5G network to further develop the information and communications services market. With concerted efforts, we will strive to maintain growth in telecommunications services revenue and a stable level of net profit. We will also strive to maintain an industry-leading customer satisfaction.”
For 2020, China Mobile will increase CAPEX to RMB 179.8 billion, up from RMB 165.9 million in 2019. The company plans to deploy 250,000 new 5G base stations this year.
