4 key takeaways from Maxis’ Q2 2016 results

• This wasn’t our easiest quarter: CEO Morten Lundal
• Lots of flats and negatives, but some key jumps too

 
ON the surface, it would appear that there was nothing much to celebrate about when mobile operator Maxis Bhd announced its second quarter (Q2) results yesterday (July 20).
 
While the company registered a 9% growth in its Q2 net profit to RM483 million, it was rather flattish in terms of its service revenue and operating profits. [RM1 = US$0.24]
 
In fact, chief executive officer Morten Lundal (pic above) admitted that the second quarter wasn’t the company’s “easiest quarter,” saying that the “competition tried to improve subscriber market share by lowering prices.”
 
“After some initial market turbulence, we saw at the closing of the quarter our results improve and we managed to keep our revenue and profit at similar levels compared with last year,” he said in an official statement.
 
Maxis recorded a 1.6% decline in its second quarter service revenue to RM2.06 billion. For the first half, its service revenue (which excludes revenue from devices sold) was 0.8% lower at RM4.18 billion.
 
Its normalised Earnings Before Interest, Tax, Depreciation and Amortisation (EBITDA) was 9.4% lower at RM1.01 billion, while normalised EBITDA margins were 4.1 percentage points lower at 49%, from 53.1% a year ago.
 
But besides these headline numbers, how did the company perform overall? We at Digital News Asia (DNA) found a few interesting data points, and you won’t believe the first one!
 
Next Page: Weathering the social media storm