Sustained data price reduction has taken its toll on Robi’s financial performance in the first quarter of the ongoing year (Q1’25). Meanwhile, prolonged economic downturn continued to cast its shadow on Robi’s financial performance in line with telco industry’s overall financial performance.
Moreover, Robi had to contribute 70% its revenue of Q1’25 to the Government exchequer in various forms. This only further aggravated Robi’s financial woes in the quarter.
According to Robi’s financial disclosure for Q1’25 published today, the company registered 2,341.1 crore taka revenue having declined from last quarter by 0.6% and by 7% compared to the same quarter last year (YoY). YoY voice revenue declined by 0.7%, while YoY data revenue declined by 11.4%.
Earnings Before Income Tax, Depreciation and Amortization (EBITDA) reached 1,110.9 crore taka at the end of Q1’25 with 47.5% margin. YoY EBITDA margin contracted by 1.0 percentage point. Profit After Tax (PAT) for first quarter was 125.5 crore taka, which is 17.6% higher than the PAT for the same quarter last year.
Data price reduction, inflationary pressure, and rising operating cost squeezed EBITDA margin, while lower EBITDA, and higher contribution to the Government exchequer knocked down PAT from last quarter.
Active subscribers’ base reached 5 crore 64 lakhs following QoQ drop of 3.7 lakhs and YoY drop of 17 lakhs. Robi’s internet subscribers’ base stood at 4 crore 25 lakhs, while 4G user base was 3 crore 67 lakhs. Interestingly, 75.5% of active subscribers were internet users and 65% of active subscribers were 4G users. As proportion of active user base, Robi leads the industry on both these counts.
Following the rise of SIM tax from 200 to 300 taka following last national budget, Robi had been carefully formulating its new customer acquisition drive to regain the lost subscriber base following the political turmoil last year.
By the end of Q1’25, Robi had ensured 4G coverage for 98.97% of the population with more than 18 thousand 4G sites. The company made capital invested of 74.7 crore taka in Q1’25. Earnings Per Share (EPS) for Q1’25 stood at 0.24 taka which was 17.6% higher in YoY comparison.
Average monthly data usage per user saw QoQ rise of 4.3%, while in terms of YoY, the growth in data usage was 18.1%. Robi paid 1,627.9 crore taka to the Government exchequer in Q1’25, which was 70% of its revenue for the quarter.
Commenting on Robi’s financial performance, the company’s Acting CEO, and Chief Financial Officer said:”Over the last year, we have reduced our data price by around 20%. Though this helped to fuel data consumption growth, it failed to support our revenue growth momentum. The sustained economic downturn has only made the situation worse for the entire industry. This challenging backdrop, high inflation and some unavoidable cost escalation cut into our profit figure. Given the high SIM tax, we opted to move cautiously on new customer acquisition to ensure balanced growth. While we remain confident that the economy will regain its strength shortly, we now have enough evidence before us to be alarmed at the current low level of data price.”
