Banglalink’s operating profit grows by 16% YoY

Bangladesh's third-largest mobile operator, Banglalink, has started to benefit from the new normal business environment, as it registered 16% year-on-year (YoY) growth in operating profit in the third quarter (Q3) – which is around 31% higher than the previous quarter.

Banglalink's operating profit in Q3 was Tk178 crore, compared to Tk136 crore in the previous quarter. 

At the same time, the telecom operator maintained solid operational improvement in revenue as it registered 0.8% growth in YoY performance in Q3 of 2020, compared to a YoY decline reported in the second quarter (Q2) of this year.

In Q3, the operator registered Tk1,150 crore in revenue, which was Tk1,110 crore in Q2 of 2020.

The operator, however, experienced an around 1% decline of its customer base in the past nine months of this year, compared to the same period of last year, says Veon's third quarter earnings results published on 29 October.

Veon, a multinational telecommunication services company headquartered in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, owns Banglalink.

In a statement, Erik Aas, chief executive officer (CEO) of Banglalink said, "Despite the hurdles, we registered an impressive 20.2% YoY data revenue growth in Q3, supported by our enhanced 4G network."

"Our total revenue and data customer-base also grew by 0.8% YoY and 7.9% YoY, respectively," he added.

Banglalink's data revenue grew by 21.7% compared to YoY [when US dollar figures are converted to taka], and the company's Toffee video streaming app and other business apps helped the operator register this growth.

Talking about this achievement, Erik Aas said, "As part of our objective to make top-ups, account management and other services more convenient for customers, we continuously promoted the use of various digital channels.

"Our efforts in this regard resulted in 33.4% QoQ [quarter on quarter] growth in the user base of Banglalink's self-care app and the acquisition of 1.5 million customers of Banglalink's video streaming app Toffee in nine months. With economic activities resuming across the country, we are gradually trying to recover from the pandemic's effects."

However, in Q3, the operator has seen a 3.44% fall in data revenue from the previous quarter.

Year-on-year, the operator has seen 0.9% de-growth in the customers' base. In the 3rd quarter of the last year, it had 33.1 million, which has dropped to 32.8 million in this year's Q3.