Dubai telco du rides on mobile subscriber growth to hit Dh933.33m as 9-month 2022 net profit

Dubai: The Dubai-headquartered telco du has recorded a 19.6 per cent increase in nine-month net profit to Dh933.33 million from Dh780.22 million, brought on by a further haul of new mobile subscribers.

For the July to September period, revenues came to Dh3.17 billion, a gain of 10.5 per cent, with sustained demand for broadband also helping out. The mobile customer base grew 14.7 per cent during this period to 7.4 million subscribers.

"Our business environment has clearly transitioned to a post-pandemic normality," said Fahad Al Hassawi, CEO. "Our results validate the efforts we deploy to: provide new products and services; improve customer experience; and execute our transformation journey. All these initiatives have laid the foundations of our commercial momentum.

"We generated service revenues in excess of Dh2 billion for a fifth consecutive quarter. Our profitability continued to improve on a sequential and year-on-year basis. We will continue to invest in our infrastructure to give our customers a simple and the best available experience in the UAE."

Broadband sign ups

In the third quarter, broadband signed up 37,000 customers, and du would be looking for repeat gains on these higher yield generating services alongside mobile.

Free of debt

du paid off Dh200 million from its revolving credit facilities, which leaves the company with a net cash position of Dh910 million and Dh3.8 billion in undrawn facility.

Slowing down on capex

During these three months, the capex spend hit Dh724 million (for a capital intensity of 22.8 per cent) and ‘reflects a seasonality effect’. “Most of the capex spend is skewed towards the second-half of the year,” said the du statement. “More importantly, our capex profile is continuing to normalize following two consecutive years of high capital intensity.”