KARACHI (February 28 2003) : Profit of Pakistan Telecommunication Company Ltd (PTCL), in the six months ended December 31, 2002, posted an increase of 16.5 percent with earning per share totalled at Rs 1.94.
PTCL released its financial results for the six months ended December 31, 2002 through the Karachi Stock Exchange on Thursday.
Profit rose to Rs 9.903 billion as compared with Rs 8.5 billion of the same period last year.
The profit number was less than the expectation of market analysts who were expecting its profit to be in the vicinity of as much as Rs 10.2 billion.
The revenue of the company amounted to Rs 32.916 billion, up from Rs 31.623 billion of the same period of the preceding year.
In the recent half of the current fiscal we believe the domestic revenue as well as the international incoming traffic is expected to show buoyancy mostly in volume terms,” she said.
However, the international revenue growth was likely to be only marginal, given the decline in the international accounting rate coupled with the strengthening of rupee.
Healthy growth in domestic revenue was a result of the positive impact of the downward revisions in NWD calls and installation tariffs during the 2H-FY 2002, she said.
Moreover, a continual decline in the financial charges would again be a major benefiting factor to the overall improved profitability in this quarter as well.
The biggest contributing factor is the higher number of actual lines in service (ALIS).
During 1HFY03, the PTCL has added 113,000 lines to its ALIS capacity, translating into a total ALIS capacity of 3.768 million.
Keeping in view the expansion progress trends in the previous years, it was expected that the annual expansion would pick up pace during 2HFY 2003.
“We strongly believe that the PTCL will eventually be able to achieve the FY03 ALIS expansion target of 550,000 lines'' analysts said.
“The PTCL's aggressive focus on line expansion will keep the growth in domestic revenues strong enough to mitigate the impact of falling international revenues. It targets 550K additional ALIS during FY03,” he said.
