China Mobile reported mobile data revenues up 62 percent from a year earlier to CNY 47.4 billion, and the operator sold 66 million 3G phones in the period. Voice revenues were down 1.2 percent to CNY 175.0 billion, despite a 3.7 percent increase in traffic. MOU fell slightly to 495 minutes per customer, as customers started to use internet services more for calls and SMS. SMS revenues were also down 5.5 percent to CNY CNY 21 billion. The operator's Mobile Market for apps and information services had 336 million registered users and recorded 506 million app downloads in the period. Revenues from the app services were up 10 percent to CNY 27.0 billion. ARPU totaled CNY 66, down from CNY 68 in 2012.
The 3G network had around 361,000 base stations at the end of the period, with network utilisation at 25 percent. China Mobile said it was also starting work on building 200,000 LTE base stations across the country to cover 100 major cities and plans to acquire over 1 million TD-LTE phones this year. In addition it has 4.1 million Wi-Fi hotspots deployed to support its mobile data strategy.
Capex is expected to accelerate in the second half of the year, after spending CNY 57 billion in H1, almost half of which went to boosting the transmission network. The capex budget for the full year is CNY 190 billion. Free cash flow in H1 was down slightly year-on-year to CNY 68.2 billion.
The operator proposed an interim dividend of HKD 1.696 per share and said it plans a full-year pay-out ratio of 43 percent of profit.
