du, from Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Company (EITC), has published its financial results for the quarter-ended 30th September 2022. Revenues increased by 10.5% to AED3.17 billion on sustained demand for broadband and mobile services.
EBITDA increased by 18.5% year-over-year to AED1,303 million. The increase in service revenues (and its inherent higher profitability) lifted the gross margin to 65.2% compared to 62.2% in Q3 2021. As a result, the EBITDA margin expanded by 277bp to 41.0%.
Mobile service revenues continued their recovery increasing by 10.7% to AED1,443 million while equipment sales generated revenues of AED176 million.
Fixed services revenues soared 22.2% to AED892 million, buoyed by the continued strong performance of the consumer segment. In aggregate, service revenues increased by 14.8% to AED2,335 million.
Fahad Al Hassawi, CEO of EITC, said,
"This quarter’s results have been excellent on all fronts. Our business environment has clearly transitioned to post-pandemic normality. We are benefiting from the UAE’s economic dynamism and healthy macro trends. 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.
"Our service revenues are recovering and growing at an encouraging pace: we generated service revenues above AED2 billion for a fifth consecutive quarter. Our profitability continued to improve on a sequential and year-on-year basis. We have invested and will continue to invest in our infrastructure to give our customers a simple and the best available experience in the UAE.”
Capital expenditures (Capex) amounted to AED724 million with a capital intensity of 22.8% and reflects a seasonality effect. The Capex profile continues to normalise following two consecutive years of high capital intensity.
The company repaid AED200 million drawn from the revolving credit facilities. This leaves du with a net cash position of AED910 million and AED3.8 billion of undrawn facilities.
The mobile customer base grew by 14.7% to 7.4 million subscribers, as the postpaid customer segment continued its continuous growth for the fifth consecutive quarter, with net-additions of 32,000 subscribers, bringing the total number of subscribers in this segment to 1.4 million.
The consumer broadband customer base increased 53.8% to 510,000. The company's broadband strategy continues to deliver, with 37,000 new customers during the quarter.
News Source: Emirates News Agency
