22 February 2023
Robi Axiata booked double-digit profit and revenue gains in the last quarter of 2022 but warned that regular cuts in tariffs meant its data business is not sustainable.
CEO Rajeev Sethi explained data revenue across 2022 increased around 2% despite 45% traffic growth due to falling tariffs driven by an aggressive price war. Sethi urged Bangladesh’s regulator to act, noting in “the absence of a data floor price, such a price war is rendering the data business unsustainable.”
Net profit in the fourth quarter hit BDT1.3 billion, up from BDT100 million in the comparable period of 2021, credited to cost management and favourable one-off gains. Sethi said it made significant gains on an optimised cost structure, which will be key to strengthening its bottom-line in future.
Revenue rose nearly 10% to BDT22.5 billion, driven by 15.6% growth in data revenue to BDT8.3 billion. Its subscriber base was up 1.4% to 5.4 million. The company added 5.1 million LTE subscribers to close the year with 29.9 million and data users accounted for 76% of its total customers. Average monthly data usage grew 38.9% to 6Gb. Capex declined 18.8% to BDT15.3 billion.
