Dubai: UAE telecom service provider du made a net profit of Dh666 million (before royalty fee payment) in the first quarter, up from Dh412 million in the year-before period, the company said in a statement to the Dubai Financial Market on Thursday.
du, formally known as Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Company, said 320,600 mobile customers joined the company in the three months to March 31, bringing the operator’s total mobile operator base to 5.5 million. Revenues increased 20.1 per cent year-on-year to Dh2.4 billion, up from Dh2 billion.
“We have enjoyed a strong start to the year,” said Othman Sultan, du’s chief executive officer. “We have achieved healthy growth in revenues, with strong performance from what we believe will be key drivers going forward including mobile data revenue and our post-paid subscriber base,” he said.
du said quarter-on-quarter growth in net profit was positively impacted by an exceptional impairment of Dh47 million in Q4, 2011 and one-off gains of approximately Dh30 million from favourable settlements in the first three months of this year.
