Dialog garners one million subscribers in a year

Dialog Telekom Ltd (DTL) said this week that it had garnered one million subscribers in the year while reporting post-tax profits of Rs. 2.57 billion in the first quarter of calendar 2007, up 11 per cent from the same period in 2006.
It said with new subscribers the company’s cellular subscriber base increased by 46 per cent to reach 3.37 million subscribers by March 31, 2007.

In a statement, the company said group post tax profits were Rs. 2.43 billion, just one percent up from the previous year due to acquisitions in the first quarter.

“In line with the strategic intent of securing future growth and earnings opportunities arising from convergent technology related business lines including but not limited to Fixed Line Telephony, Broadband and Digital Television media, Dialog Telekom has over the past year seeded nascent new business through acquired subsidiaries Dialog Broadband Networks (DBN) and Asset Media Group (AM).

DBN is currently engaged in the build out of a CDMA based Fixed WLL Network and WiMax Technology based Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) infrastructure aimed at exploiting the severely under-penetrated Broadband Internet Sector. Asset Media recently commenced a satellite based pay television services targeting the future earnings potential of the similarly under-penetrated pay television market,” the statement added.

DBN delivered a positive bottom line of Rs 10.39 million to the company while the recently seeded business of Asset Media is yet to breakeven having posted an operating loss of Rs. 136 million for the first-quarter of 2007.

The company said however that both subsidiaries are expected to deliver ‘robust revenues and healthy margins over time as the market and infrastructure development phase in which the subsidiaries are engaged in at the present, evolves into a growth and revenue generating phase.’

Total operating revenue increased by 24 per cent to Rs. 7.24 billion, driven by robust growth of the cellular subscriber base delivering enhanced call revenues. The prepaid segment contributed a major part of the growth. Other factors driving revenue growth included the growth in coverage and increased international traffic and associated revenues, it said.
Domestic revenues, which consist mainly of pre-paid and post-paid revenue, accounted for approximately 81per cent of company revenue.

“The revenue growth achieved was on the backdrop of intermittent disruption of the company’s services in the northern and eastern provinces of Sri Lanka – markets which previously contributed up to 7 per cent of company revenue, and a reduction (relative to Q1 2006) of inbound roaming clients – a performance measure which is closely correlated to inbound tourist arrivals,” it said.

“Value added services (VAS) revenues accounted for close to 10 per cent of total revenues. Peer-to-Peer SMS revenue continued to represent the largest component of non-voice revenue accounting for 6 per cent of total revenue,” the statement said.