NT’s net slides as revenue grows

NEPAL Telecom’s (NT) net profit declined by Rs 1 billion in 2012-13 even as its revenue increased to Rs 37.60 billion. The reason behind the fall in the profit is the payment of the first instalment of the licence renewal fee. In 2011-12, the state-owned company had earned Rs 11.60 billion profits. In the year, its revenue was at Rs 36.79 billion. NT, which is also the largest tax paying company, has projected a net profit of Rs 10.59 billion for the last fiscal year. The company paid Rs 2.5 billion to the government as the first instalment of Rs 20 billion licence renewal fee in January. NT, unveiling its annual plan for 2013-14 on Sunday, said it would generate a net profit of Rs 11.96 billion from the targeted income of Rs 41.65 billion. The income targeted by NT for the current fiscal is up by more than Rs 4 billion compared to projected income of Rs 37.60 billion for the last fiscal year. In a bid to achieve the revenue target, NT has planned to distribute around 3 million mobile and telephone lines besides expanding its data services nationwide. According to NT, the budget and programmes for the current fiscal have been prepared taking into account the increased competition in the market and the need to improve services. It has announced a budget of Rs 69.95 billion which includes a capital expenditure of Rs 19.41 billion, investments in projects of Rs 15.95 billion, bonuses and incentives of Rs 842.89 billion and dividends to shareholders of Rs 612.48 million. Similarly, NT, which is also the largest taxpayer in the country, expects to pay Rs 21.35 billion in taxes to the government. It paid Rs 20.37 billion in taxes to the government during the last fiscal under different heads. “This year’s income is projected to grow with the implementation of the 4.8 million GSM mobile lines project and growth in data services,” said Guna Keshari Pradhan, spokesperson of NT. She added that the company’s revenue target was also based on the plan to distribute 2.91 million telephone lines including 2 million GSM and 886,000 CDMA lines. Under its IP-CDMA project of 2 million lines, NT has already started to distribute new mobile lines that can provide voice and high speed data service using a single RUIM card. According to the company, it is also preparing to distribute RUIM cards through bundling with IP CDMA technology enabled handsets. In the landline segment, distribution of a total of 27,401 new lines is planned for this year. Establishment of customer contact centres, implementation of a convergent real time billing and customer support system, installation of 500 Wi-Fi hotspots in different parts of the country, operation of fibre to the home (FTTH) service and capacity enhancement of ADSL are some of the major plans included in NT’s annual plan. It said that it had already started installing Wi-Fi hotspots using WiMax broadband service and work on the FTTH project had also started with a focus on major business hubs of the country. As of mid-June 2013, NT’s total subscriber base reached 8.96 million with regard to voice services - mobile and landline services adding 1.28 million new customers in the first 11 months (mid-July 2012 to mid-June 2013). In the same period, it added 1.08 million data users taking their total number to 3.17 million. The number of NT’s data users is growing by more than 100 percent each year, according to Pradhan.