Etihad Etisalat (Mobily), Saudi Arabia's second-largest mobile phone company, posted a forecast-beating 50 per cent rise in second-quarter net profit, driven by growth in broadband services.
Shares rose 3.5 per cent as the company set the bar high for local rivals Saudi Telecom Company (STC) and Zain Saudi Arabia vying for users in the kingdom where mobile penetration exceeds 100 per cent.
Mobily said quarterly net profit was SR675 million (Dh661m) after SR448m in the same period a year ago, it said in a statement on the Saudi bourse website. This was well above the average forecast of SR537.76m in a survey of five analysts.
"These are very strong results. The investments in broadband and data networks are obviously paying off," said Nadine Ghobrial, telecoms analyst at EFG-Hermes in Cairo. Mobily attributed the gain to strong growth with broadband services where it has now more than 600,000 active customers with each one consuming not less than 1 gigabyte a month.
Revenues from broadband services rose by 180 percent in the first six months, Mobily said without giving absolute figures or revenues for the whole company. Volumes of data transfer exceeded 37.5 terabytes alone in May.
"The company did not report revenues figure so we do not have margin figures but we believe they have probably improved," said Ghobrial.
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