Robi's revenue goes up 9.7% in third quarter

The country's second-largest mobile operator Robi ended the third quarter of this year with 38.9 crore taka in profit after taxes, on the back of a 9.7% revenue growth.

The operator posted 1,934 crore taka in revenue for the quarter, it said on Thursday.

The company's profit after taxes stood at 116 crore taka in the first nine months of the current year, up 1.9% year-on-year.

However, Mahtab Uddin Ahmed, Robi's managing director and chief executive officer, said: "The excessively high taxation regime continues to undermine our performance, with a minimum 2% turnover tax casting the darkest spell on our business."

During the third quarter, Robi's active subscriber base grew 4.5% to 5.1 crore – 30% of the market share.

And nearly 3.5 crore of these subscribers are internet users, who brought 684 crore taka in revenue for the company, up 22% year-on-year.

Robi's voice revenue saw double-digit growth of 12.1% compared to the previous quarter, reaching 972 crore taka in the July-September quarter. However, it dropped 8.2% year-on-year.

The company paid 875.1 crore taka to the government exchequer in the third quarter this year – 45.3% of its total revenue for the period.

Mahtab said: "On the backdrop of our imminent entry into the country's stock markets, we are very happy to maintain profitability in Q3'20 supported by enviable revenue growth."