Indosat revenues rise 13.8%

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

PT Indosat, the country's second largest telecommunications firm, has started the year off with a positive outlook, booking a steady increase in both its earnings and net profits during this year's first quarter.

Indosat announced last week that its operating revenues as of March 31 had grown by as much as 13.8 percent to Rp 2.87 trillion (some US$301 million), from Rp 2.52 trillion in the same period last year.

The company's net profit also continued to grow by nearly 39 percent to Rp 282.8 billion, excluding gains from asset sales in the corresponding period the year before.

Indosat's Rp 637.9 billion net profit during last year's first quarter was on the back of Rp 434.5 billion in gains from several asset sales, including the sale of its Central Java fixed-line unit PT Mitra Global Telekomunikasi to PT Alberta Telecommunication.

"I am pleased to report that we continued to post good results in this quarter," Indosat vice president Ng Eng Ho said in a statement.

"With cellular subscribers growing by 54.6 percent to 10.2 million subscribers, cellular revenue grew by 25.1 percent as compared to the same period last year."

Apart from the strong revenues from its Mentari, Matrix and IM3 cellular services, Indosat also saw a revenue increase in its multimedia and internet business of up to 12.3 percent, and a 2.3 percent revenue growth from its international direct dialing services.

With such figures, Indosat is upbeat about being able to wrap up the year as solidly as last year.

"Looking at the first quarter results and the trend in the following months, we are still on track to continue our plan and meet our performance targets for the full year," Ng said.

Indosat booked total operating revenues of Rp 10.6 trillion last year, up 28.1 percent from 2003, with a net profit of Rp 1.63 trillion.

The publicly listed firm is 41.94 percent owned by Singapore- based STT Telemedia, 15 percent by the government and the remainder by the public.

Indosat had previously announced plans to sell Rp 1 trillion in bonds next month as well as dollar-denominated bonds later this year, to finance its $900 million expansion this year, most of which will be used to boost its network capacity to enable it to handle 15 million cellular subscribers.