China Unicom Interim Net Profit Surges 11.8 TimesChina Unicom, China's second-largest mobile-phone operator, said Wednesday its first-half-year net profit surged 11.8 times to 2.19 billion yuan (280 million U.S. dollars), compared with 171 million yuan in the same period last year.Its total revenue for the first six months ending June 30, 2001 posted a year-one-year increase of 29.6 percent to 13.62 billion yuan, which confirmed some brokerage firms estimation that the company would net a revenue ranging between 13.18 billion yuan and 15.6 billion yuan. Revenue from cellular business reached 9.45 billion yuan, representing an increase of 79.8 percent from the same period of last year; Revenue from long distance, data and Internet business reached 1.37 billion yuan, an increase of 465.8 percent over last year. In the first six months of 2001, total cellular subscribers of China Unicom reached 20.199 million, a rise of 58.2 percent from the end of last year, bringing its market share from 22.7 percent at the end of last year to 26.3 percent. Yang Xianzu, CEO of China Unicom, said he was happy with the company's interim results since "such rapid growth is rarely seen"among its other counterparts. He also said his company is very likely to maintain the same growth momentum throughout the rest of the year. China Unicom is an integrated telecom service provider offering services such as cellular, paging, domestic and international long distance, data and Internet services. The company was listed in June 2000 in Hong Kong and New York. |
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