Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信), the nation’s largest phone company, said yesterday net profits grew 19.3 percent last month with the aid of a lower tax rate.
Chunghwa Telecom earned NT$4.72 billion (US$147 million), or NT$0.49 per share, last month, after the government cut the business income tax rate to 16 percent from 23 percent.
The company did not provide revised figures for comparison with last year’s profits.
The tax rate reduction has led to better-than-usual net profits for last month, Chunghwa Telecom said in a company statement released yesterday.
The legislature in May gave the go-ahead to cut the business income tax rate from 20 percent to 17 percent to attract more investments from overseas companies.
Last year, Chunghwa Telecom reported its business income tax rate as 25 percent.
The favorable tax rate also raised Chunghwa Telecom’s net profits by 12.5 percent in the first six months to NT$25.04 billion, up from NT$22.26 billion a year ago, the phone company said.
Last month’s sales rose 2.5 percent year-on-year to NT$15.36 billion, bringing the company’s revenues in the first half of the year to NT$91.77 billion, Chunghwa Telecom’s figures show.
Sales rose on the back of climbing mobile data usage, increasing sales of smartphones and better revenues from corporate customers, the statement said.
Revenues from mobile data services accounted for 14.3 percent of overall service revenues in the first six months, as mobile data revenues jumped 27.6 percent year-on-year, the phone company said.
Taiwan Mobile Co (台灣大哥大), the nation’s second-largest telecom operator, yesterday reported net profits for last month of NT$1.02 billion, or NT$0.34 per share, down 13.56 percent from NT$1.18 billion, or NT$0.4 a share, the previous year.
Taiwan Mobile said rising use of its mobile data services had partly offset the erosion from the 5.87 percent annual price reduction required by the nation’s telecom regulator, the National Communications Commission.
Taiwan Mobile posted a larger-than-expected loss of NT$788 million for old equipment, compared with its estimate of NT$352 million.
The company posted NT$6.7 billion in net income in the first half, up 2.3 percent from NT$6.86 billion in the same period of last year.
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