China Tower net profit up 16.1% year-on-year
China Tower business in the first half of the year was positively impacted by the accelerated deployment of 5G sites across the Asian nation, the company said in its earnings release.
During H1 2021, the company’s net profit grew 16.1% year-on-year to CNY3.45 billion ($532.6 million) while operating revenue increased 7.2% to CNY42.67 billion.
In the first half of 2021, China Tower said TSP (telecom service providers) business revenue amounted to CNY39.8 billion, an increase of 4.5% year-on-year, of which the tower business revenue accounted for CNY37.7 billion while the DAS business revenue accounted for CNY2.08 billion, representing a year-on-year growth of 3.7% and 21.3% respectively.
As of the end of June 2021, China Tower was managing a total of 2.03 million tower sites, a net cumulative addition of 12,000 sites from the end of 2020.
The company’s DAS business covered buildings with a total area of 4.41 billion square meters as of the end of the first half of the year, up by 41.3% year-on-year.
“We completed the infrastructure of approximately 256,000 5G projects in the first half of 2021, of which 97% were completed by utilizing existing resources. This underscored our strength in sharing resources to support the large-scale construction of 5G networks in a cost-effective manner. At the same time, the impact of 5G on improving our revenue has begun to show its effects, with 5G becoming the key growth driver of our TSP business,” the company said in a release.
China Tower was formed in 2014, when the country’s mobile carrier China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom transferred their telecom towers to the new company. The three telcos decided to create the new entity in a move to reduce redundant construction of telecommunications infrastructure across the country. China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom currently own a 38%, 28.1% and 27.9% stake respectively. State-owned asset manager China Reform Holding owns the remaining 6%.
Chinese operators have deployed a total of 961,000 5G base stations as of the end of July, according to recent Chinese press reports.
The report stated that the number of base stations in China currently represents approximately 80% of the total number of 5G sites deployed globally.
China Mobile, the world’s largest operator in terms of subscribers, added a total of 28.7 million 5G subscribers in June, according to the carrier’s latest available figures.
The operator said it ended last month with 250.69 million 5G subscribers, compared to 70.2 million 5G customers in June 2020.
Rival operator China Unicom said it added a total of 7.23 million 5G subscribers during June. The telco ended June with 113.33 million 5G subscribers, up from 106.1 million the previous month. China Unicom started to provide 5G statistics earlier this year.
Meanwhile, China Telecom added 6.66 million 5G subscribers in June to take its total 5G subscribers base to 131.5 million.
