Taiwan Mobile Co (台灣大哥大), the nation's No. 3 mobile operator, said yesterday that margins excluding tax and depreciation set a six-month record last month on improved cost efficiency, which would help the company achieve its second-quarter financial forecast.
The EBITA margin, an approximate measure of a company's operating cash flow, rallied to 46.73 percent last month.
That brought consolidated net income up by around 21 percent to NT$1.53 billion (US$47.2 million) last month, from NT$1.26 billion in April -- ?flat compared to earnings a year ago. Sales were almost unchanged at NT$4.95 billion versus NT$5.02 billion last year.
Taiwan Mobile president Harvey Chang (
"Though the momentum overall in the mobile industry is weakening, the company has been making every effort to effectively use its expenses," Chang said in a statement released yesterday.
"We expect to hit the second-quarter target in terms of after-tax profits," he added.
Taiwan Mobile forecast in April that pre-tax income for the second-quarter would increase by 54 percent to around NT$5 billion from NT$3.23 billion in the first three months of the year.
With substantial progress last month, Taiwan Mobile is catching its nearest rival Far EasTone Telecommunications Co (
Chunghwa Telecom, the nation's top phone company, posted a 15-percent drop at NT$3.7 billion in net income, or NT$0.39 a share, for last month, compared to NT$4.4 billion in April, according to the operator's statistics. Last month's figure deducted from January-April net income. The company did not provide year-on-year figures for comparison.
Chunghwa Telecom chief financial officer Hank Wang (王漢朝) said in a phone interview yesterday that the company was still reviewing the results and could not give a specific reason for the decline.
Sales last month dropped 3 percent to NT$15 billion from April. Chunghwa Telecom projected that net income for this year would slide to NT$44.2 billion, or NT$4.56 a share, from last year. Sales are expected to be flat at NT$184.2 billion versus NT$183.38 billion.
Far EasTone, however, posted a 2-percent increase in pre-tax income to NT$1.45 billion, or NT$0.38 a share, for last month, compared to NT$1.42 billion. Sales also grew 4 percent during the same period.
On the Taiwan Stock Exchange, shares of Far EasTone and Chunghwa Telecom rose 2.43 percent and 1.86 percent to NT$37.9 and NT$60.3 respectively, while Taiwan Mobile shares lost 1.96 percent to NT$30.
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