Robi makes Tk 170m profit in 2019

Robi Axiata Limited, country’s leading telecommunication operator finished 2019 with a profit after tax (PAT) of 170 million taka.

Propelled by robust data revenue growth of 28% over 2018, Robi ended 2019 with 74.81 billion taka as total revenue, which is 10% higher than 2018, the mobile operator announced during a press conference at its head office.

“When we see that five out of seven customers are joining our network from other operators using MNP service, we feel completely justified to claim that we offer the best data network experience in the industry,” said Mahtab Uddin Ahmed, managing director and CEO of Robi.

He told the media that Robi will be listed in the two share markets of Bangladesh later this year given that the government reduces corporate taxes by 10% and the minimum tax on revenue is reduced from 2% to 0.75%.

Although the corporate tax rate is set at 45%, Robi’s effective tax rate for this year was more than 90%. The effective tax rate went up on the backdrop of Robi making positive PAT in this year.

On the whole, increase of the minimum tax rate from 0.75% to 2%, supplementary duty on smartphones from 10% to 25%, supplementary duty on mobile usage from 5% to 10% and doubling of SIM tax to 200 taka had a major impact of the financial performance of the company.

Adding 2.1 million new subscribers, the company ended 2019 with a subscriber base of 49 million subscribers, representing 29.6% of subscriber market share; compared to 2018, the subscriber base grew by 4.5% in 2019.

Helped by the double digital revenue growth, average revenue per user (ARPU) also increased to 123 taka in 2019; compared to 2018, ARPU grew by 3.7% in 2019.

Robi has paid 692 crore taka to the Government exchequer in Q4’19 alone. In total, 2,762 crore taka was paid to the Government exchequer by Robi in 2019.