Sri Lanka’s Dialog Axiata net up 20-pct in June quarter

Aug 08, 2016 (LBO) – Profits at Sri Lanka’s Dialog Axiata group, which has interests in mobile, fixed and pay television rose 20 percent to 2.3 billion rupees from a year earlier in the June quarter, interim accounts showed. The group reported earnings of 28 cents per share for the quarter compared to 23 cents per share a year ago. The share was trading at 10.90 rupees, up 0.93 percent on Monday. Revenues grew 19 percent to 21.0 billion rupees in the quarter from a year earlier, direct costs rose at a slower 10 percent to 11.0 billion rupees and gross profits rose 30 percent to 10.0 billion rupees. Distribution and administrative costs rose 28 percent to 6.8 billion rupees in the quarter from a year earlier, while net finance costs rose from 126 million rupees to 597 million rupees.

“Second quarter was significantly impacted by externalities, featuring in main the introduction of VAT and NBT,” Dialog said in a statement. The introduction of VAT at 15 percent and NBT at 2 percent on Telecommunication services resulted in aggregate Telecommunication service consumption taxes increasing from 27.6 percent to 49.7 percent for voice services and from 12.2 percent to 31.7 percent for data services. “Performance was further affected by impacts arising from the adverse weather conditions that prevailed in the country during the month of May 2016.” In the six months to June, the group reported earnings of 61 cents per share on total profits of 4.9 billion rupees, up 27 percent against previous year. The Group recorded revenue of 42.2 billion rupees for the first half of 2016, demonstrating a growth of 20 percent from a year earlier. Dialog Television recorded a revenue growth of 12 percent year to date to reach 3.1 billion rupees for the first half of 2016 while Dialog Broadband Networks recorded revenue of 4.4 billion rupees representing an increase of 24 percent. The Group has contributed to state revenues by remitting a total of 16.9 billion rupees during first half of 2016.

Dialog Axiata group’s capital expenditure for the first half of 2016 amounted to 7.1 billion rupees. Dialog commissioned the Ultra High Capacity 100G-PLUS Bay of Bengal Gateway Submarine Fibre Optic Cable in second quarter with an investment of 5 billion rupees which will deliver over 6.4 Terabits per Second of international bandwidth to Sri Lanka. As at the end of June, 20,985 public shareholders were holding 16.68 percent of the total shareholding of the company.