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Grameenphone, the country’s largest network service provider, felt the pinch of a regulatory ban on the sales of its SIM cards as the company lost 29 lakh subscribers in the third quarter (July-September) of 2022.
The telecom watchdog Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) banned GP from selling new SIM cards in late June, citing the operator’s failure to provide quality services.
The ban that came into force on June 30 this year caused a serious blow to the subscriber base of the country’s top network service provider, according to a media statement issued by Grameenphone.
The number of GP subscribers stood at 8.18 crore at the end of the quarter. Of them, 4.55 crore, or 55.6 per cent, were using internet services, the company said.
The company’s growth, however, continued in July-September riding on the strong market execution and high revenue, said Yasir Azman, chief executive officer of Grameenphone.
“We continued our investments in network rollout and spectrum deployment for meeting the demand for high-speed internet connectivity and improving customer experience through 19.1K of 4G sites.”
“The mobile users were still choosing Grameenphone as their top trusted network partner, helping us register a 52.1 per cent year-on-year rise in data usage, and 15.9 per cent year-on-year growth in 4G users, hitting the number to 3.2 crores,” Yasir Azman stated.
According to the company’s claim, its SIM card sales faced a big blow due to the regulatory ban from late June, causing a 3.4 per cent quarter-to-quarter decline in subscribers.
The company, however, received a partial withdrawal of the embargo from the mid of September, allowing it to resume SIM card sales again.
The network service provider registered revenue of Tk 3,865 crore in the third quarter of 2022, up 6.7 per cent from the figure of Tk 3620 crore in the same period of last year.
The company’s earnings per share (EPS) for the third quarter of 2022 stood at Tk 6.72 from Tk 6.34 in the same period last year.
With these earnings per share, GP posted the highest EPS in the past three years.
The company posted a net profit of Tk 907 crore in Q3 of 2022, which was up 6.1 per cent from Tk 855 crore in Q3 of 2021.
Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) for the quarter grew by 5 per cent on a year-on-year basis driven by topline growth, while EBITDA margin was 62.2 per cent, said Jens Becker, the chief financial officer of Grameenphone.
The company paid Tk 7,850 crore or 69.5 per cent of its total revenue, to the country’s revenue authority in the first nine months of 2022.
Grameenphone invested Tk278.15 crore for network coverage and expansion in July-September of 2022.
