China Mobile posted operating revenue of CNY 768.1 billion for 2020, which represents an increase of 3 percent year-on-year. Of this, telecommunications services revenue amounted to CNY 695.7 billion, up 3.2 percent year-on-year. Revenue growth was mainly boosted by China Mobile’s Home and Business segments.
Wireline broadband revenue jumped 17.4 percent year-on-year to CNY 80.8 billion, while revenue from applications and information services climbed 22.4 percent year-on-year to CNY 101 billion.
Profit increased by 1.1 percent year-on-year to CNY 107.8 billion or CNY 5.27 per share. EBITDA was CNY 285.1 billion, down by 3.7 percent year-on-year. EBITDA margin was 37.1 percent, down by 2.6 percentage points compared to the previous year. Capital expenditure reached CNY 180.6 billion and free cash flow stood at CNY 127.1 billion.
China Mobile’s board recommends a final dividend payment of HKD 1.76 per share for the year ended 31 December 2020. Together with the interim dividend of HKD 1.53 per share already paid, total dividend for the 2020 financial year amounted to HKD 3.29 per share. The company plans to maintain a stable dividend per share for the full year of 2021.
‘Customer’ market
China Mobile ended 2020 with 942 million mobile customers. Of these, 165 million customers were 5G subscribers, representing a net increase of 162 million customers in the period. Mobile ARPU reached CNY 47.4. Average handset data traffic per user per month increased by 39 percent to 9.4GB.
‘Home’ market
In 2020, China Mobile added 20.13 million household broadband customers, bringing the total number to 192 million. 141 million of these customers registered for our digital set-top box service ‘Mobaihe’, accounting for 73.3 percent of the company’s household customer base. Household broadband blended ARPU reached CNY 37.7, an increase of 6.9 percent year-on-year.
‘Business’ market
In 2020, the number of China Mobile saw a net increase of 3.56 million in its corporate customer base, totaling 13.84 million at 31 December 2020. Revenue from dedicated lines increased by 19.3 percent year-on-year to CNY 24 billion. Mobile cloud revenue reached CNY 9.2 billion, up by 353.8 percent year-on-year.
‘New’ market
In 2020, China Mobile’s international business revenue rose 16.6 percent year-on-year to CNY 11.1 billion. Its equity investment returns in 2020 accounted for 11.8 percent of our net profit. As of the end of December 2020, the number of monthly active users of MIGU Video increased by 18.4 percent year-on-year. The customer bases of video connecting tones and cloud product ‘and-Caiyun’ topped 140 million and 100 million, respectively, and the number of monthly active users of ‘and-Wallet’ increased by 39.1 percent year-on-year.
China Mobile’s ‘5G+’ development plan
China Mobile implemented its ‘5G+’ plan to promote the co-construction and sharing of 5G infrastructure. In 2020, the company reports that its total 5G-related investment amounted to CNY 102.5 billion. Throughout the year, the operator built and put in use around 340,000 new 5G base stations, bringing the total number of 5G base stations to a cumulative 390,000.
