Robi springs back in profit
Robi returned to the black in 2020 on the trunk of higher data income and heavy data consumption in the first quarter of the entire year.
The country's second-largest cellular phone operator posted a net profit of Tk 18.77 crore between January and March, weighed against net losses of Tk 24.6 crore in the same quarter a year earlier and Tk 96.9 crore in the previous quarter.
While it is a heartening development for the operator as it gears up for listing on the country's bourse, the profit streak is unlikely to keep in to the following quarter, which coincides with possibly among the gloomiest economic slumps in recent memory.
Immediately after the first confirmed cases of COVID-19 were announced on March 8, the country went into shutdown, a development that sent the operator's data usage spiralling.
But its voice call business, which is still its bread and butter, was, however, damaged in April and could as the shutdown meant some of its low-income subscribers were unemployed, while its retailers could not open shops either.
The current income situation took the company where it was 3 to 4 years back, said a Robi official requesting anonymity as he is not authorised to speak with the media.
"We are experiencing daily revenue shortfall around Tk 4 crore, which is 16 per cent of our daily income right now," said Mahtab Uddin Ahmed, chief executive officer of Robi, in a media briefing recently.
But, Robi has much to take heart from its first quarter performance.
The operator clocked in Tk 1,947.7 crore in earnings in the first 90 days of 2020, creating 6.48 % higher growth year-on-year.
Of the revenue, 33 % came from the info segment, which may be the highest in one quarter, said Robi's parent company Axiata Group in its sydney recently.
Robi's users are actually consuming more data than ever before, averaging 2.4 gigabytes monthly by March, also the best on the market, the report said.
Some 43 % of its total 4.97 crore customers had a smartphone in March and customers pushed the digital service growth.
At the end of the quarter, 3.23 crore internet users were enjoying Robi's data service, the report said.
"Robi experienced yet another excellent quarter with expansion recorded across all key metrics," said Jamaludin Ibrahim, president and group CEO of Axiata, which holds 68.7 % shares in the operator.
The carrier managed to cut overall operational expenditure, especially in the network management, staff costs, debt and sales and marketing costs.
Due to high operating leverage and lower staff costs, Robi's earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation, that is a way of measuring a company's overall financial performance, grew faster than earnings at 10.1 %, increasing margins by 1.3 percentage points to 40.4 %.
