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China Unicom Profits up
China Unicom (Hong Kong), the public listed branch of the country's second biggest mobile telecom operator, reported yesterday a four-fold profit growth in the year 2000.
This is Unicom's first year-end report since going public in Hong Kong and New York in June last year.
Unicom disclosed a profit of 3.23 billion yuan (US$39 million) for the year, which is a growth of 290 per cent over that for the previous year, said the report.
This figure is much higher than the market expectation. According to a survey made by Bloomberg News, brokerages forecast Unicom would earn 1.1-1.7 billion yuan (US$130-210 million) for the year.
Mobile business was the most significant contributor to the rapid growth, according to the Unicom report.
The company tripled its mobile subscribers last year, to 12.8 million, giving it 22 per cent of the market in the 12 coastal provinces where it operates.
The number of mobile users in China doubled to 85 million last year, according to statistics from the Ministry of Information Industry.
Long distance calls, data delivery and Internet access services reported rapid growth as well. Their combined contribution to the revenue have grown from 0.5 per cent a year ago to 4.6 per cent.
While the contribution of the paging business, which has been severely eroded by mobile phones, shrank significantly in the year from 66 per cent in 1999 to 41 per cent by the end of December.
Facing fierce competition from dominating China Mobile, Unicom launched many value-added services in the year such as mobile phone banking, mobile securities trading, business assistance and mobile entertainment information service.
Unicom has started roaming mobile telecom services in 29 countries and regions and signed agreements with 80 telecom operators in more than 50 countries and regions.
The country's only comprehensive telecom company that can offer fixed-line, mobile, paging and Internet access, Unicom has broken the monopoly in the mobile business and become a strong rival to China Mobile.
Source: chinadaily.com.cn
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