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Bangladesh’s second-largest telecom firm Robi Axiata reported a net profit of Tk 39.8 crore for the first quarter of this year, a rise of 13.96 per cent year-on-year.
The figure was Tk 34.29 crore in the same period a year ago, said the operator in a statement on Tuesday.
The total revenue surged 1.9 per cent year-on-year to Tk 2,018.9 crore during the quarter ended March 2022. On a quarter-on-quarter basis, it was down 1.3 per cent. Its earnings per share (EPS) stood at Tk 0.08 during the period.
The company’s quarterly report mentioned that if the 2 per cent minimum turnover tax were removed, net profit could have been Tk 80.2 crore and EPS could have also been doubled to Tk 0.15.
Robi Acting CEO and CFO M Riyaaz Rasheed said, “While we are happy with our financial performance, we continue to observe that the taxation regime is undermining our growth potential.”
“In particular, in connection with the 2 per cent minimum turnover tax, we saw our PAT halve for the quarter. Due to this unjust tax, our PAT in Q1 FY22 was Tk 39.8 crore, instead of Tk 80.2 crore,” he said.
Robi’s 4G leadership position further consolidated in Q1 FY22 with 45.9 per cent of its total subscribers
being 4G users.
Some 73.4 per cent of Robi’s subscriber base were data subscribers, which was the highest in the industry during the quarter.
The operator's 4G network provided 98.2 per cent population coverage with 14,891 4G sites. Each Robi data subscriber consumed 4.6 GB of data every month on average in Q1.
On a quarter-on-quarter basis, data usage per subscriber, per month, increased by 37.1 per cent.
Robi’s subscriber base grew by 0.7 per cent compared to last quarter to reach 5.41 crore at the end of Q1 FY22.
The data subscriber base grew by 0.3 per cent compared to last quarter to reach 3.97 crore. Compared to the same quarter last year, the data subscriber base grew by 8.3 per cent. The company had 2.48 crore 4G subscribers at the end of Q1 FY22.
Listed in 2020, Robi paid Tk 957.9 crore to the government exchequer in Q1, which was 47.4 per cent of the total revenue for the quarter.
On Tuesday, its stocks declined 0.30 per cent to Tk 32.70 on the Dhaka Stock Exchange.
