01 November 2022

Robi Axiata has reported growth in revenue, subscribers and ARPU in the third quarter of 2022, but rising costs associated with a network expansion weighed on profit.

Net profit fell to BDT292 million from BDT865 million in Q3 2021 and mobile revenue grew 6.7% to BDT20.2 billion.

Acting CEO and CFO M. Riyaaz Rasheed said that profitability is subdued due to higher capex, with a related increase in depreciation and amortisation costs “squeezing the profit margin.”

“Unfortunately, there is no alternative to this strategy if we want to increase the scale of our business,” said Rasheed.

Robi Axiata’s user base increased 2.6% to 54.4 million, with LTE subscribers rising 4.9% to 27.6 million. Data revenue rose 2.6% to BDT7.8 billion. ARPU was up 1.6% to BDT129 and average data consumption 34.2% to 5.7GB a month.

The company added some 1,000 4G sites in the 12 months to end-September for a total of 15,219 and population coverage of 98.2%.