SLT moves forward with positive results

12-Aug-2009

Sri Lanka Telecom Group, the country’s number one integrated telecommunication service provider, with its subsidiary companies continued to be aggressive in the expanded telecommunication market in fixed, mobile, data, internet, IPTV, international and other diversified areas, achieving revenue and generating a subscriber base of more than 5 Million customers as at the end of the first half of 2009.

The Group’s after tax net profit was Rs. 1,346 million. Even though the result is a 57% dip from Rs. 3,163 million of the same period of last year, the group achieved these favourable results despite severe competition within the industry and the economic downturn which affected all industries.

Releasing the results, the Group Chairperson Ms. Leisha De Silva Chandrasena stated that "In spite of the adverse economic scenario and critical financial conditions prevailing worldwide, SLT has been able to show resilience to weather the storm and bring about performance. SLT and its subsidiaries is of the view that the diversification strategies and customer centric business operations have paid off and resulted in achieving positive results in the face of turbulent economic conditions".

Adding further she said, "We have carefully analyzed the market conditions in the region against the performance of the top players in the region. Results project the same as in our country. Considering the situations we are very comfortable in managing SLT Group performance in this level".

SLT group revenue has grown by 1% to Rs. 23,585 million from Rs. 23,358 million in the same period of last year, with Significant growth from Mobitel (mobile) and data related services across the group offsetting the impacts of increased competition in the voice and international businesses that resulted in a dip in SLT company revenue by 9% to Rs. 16,867 million.

Though the SLT Group’s top line growth is recorded at only 1% revenue growth, the revenue contribution is aligned with the SLT group long term strategy of growing its Mobile and data businesses, which have seen a growth of 40% and 15% respectively, SLT strongly believes that there will be a huge potential in these sectors in the future.

The country’s total telecommunication market has expanded to a penetration rate of around 75% of the 20 million population with around 60% of the covered population served by the mobile sector.

Today, the telecommunication market is quickly transforming from voice to a data driven market. Sri Lanka Telecom foresaw this trend long ago and laid an extensive optical fibre network connecting the far corners of the island. The Company has already rolled out necessary state of the art technologies such as IP-MPLS on the optical fibre backbone network in order to cater for future data solution demands and any IP technology based demands such as broadband solutions, including IP-TV. Today, Sri Lanka Telecom’s optical fibre and IP-MPLS network caters to almost all top corporates in the country. SLT expects to strengthen this further.