StarHub Q1 profit falls 21%

Singapore’s StarHub has reported a 21% year-on-year decline in net profit for the first quarter to S$73 million ($51.9 million), partly as a result of declining revenue from pay TV and mobile services.

Revenue for the quarter increased marginally to S$592 million, but service revenue declined 1% to S$537 million, the company said.

Mobile revenue was down 1% to S$296 million, despite net additions of 43,000 pre-paid customers and 48,000 post-paid subscribers. Prepaid and post-paid ARPU also both declined by S$2, to S$15 and S$67 respectively.

StarHub’s Pay TV revenue meanwhile fell 7% to S$88 million as a result of a decrease in the operator’s total pay TV subscriber base of 41,000 to around 487,000 households. This was despite a low 0.9% churn rate.

Broadband revenue increased slightly to S$54 million, even as residential broadband customers fell by 3,000 to 470,000 households.

Enterprise fixed revenue increased 3% year-on-year to S$99 million, with data and internet services contributing S$88 million of this while enterprise voice revenue fell 19% to S11 million.

The declining pay TV subscriber base meanwhile led to a roughly 12,000 household reduction in StarHub’s triple play or higher customer base to 338,000.

Based on the results and the current economic outlook, StarHub said it expects service revenue for the year to be roughly flat, and has set a projected capex budget of around 13% of total revenue.

“We have made the necessary investments in the recent spectrum auction to continue delivering quality mobile services to our increasing Mobile base. The acquired spectrum will also facilitate our roadmap towards 5G,” StarHub CEO Tan Tong Hai said.

Driving growth in the enterprise business remains our priority and we are on track to introduce new cyber security, IoT and smart retail solutions to the market. We will grow our enterprise digital services offerings with our latest strategic management addition.”