Telkom reports US$37m first quarter earnings

JAKARTA (JP): State telecommunications company PT Telkom reported on Monday a consolidated net income of Rp 306.04 billion (US$36.87 million) in the first quarter of this year, compared to a net loss of Rp 398.9 billion in the same period of 1998.

The company said the turnaround was the result of an increase in operating revenue and a drastic drop in foreign exchange losses.

During the first quarter of this year, Telkom's total revenue rose 14 percent to Rp 1.75 trillion from Rp 1.53 trillion.

Foreign exchange losses reached Rp 156.2 billion in the first quarter of this year, compared to Rp 1.2 trillion in the same period last year.

Telkom said that in order to improve its services it spent Rp 604.6 billion in the first quarter of this year. Of this total, Rp 586.9 billion was spent expanding its fixed-line network and Rp 17.7 billion was invested in quality enhancement and new business and technology development.

Under a joint operation scheme (KSO) signed in 1995, Telkom appointed five consortia of local and foreign firms to finance, build and operate two million telephone lines, a number which later was revised to 1.2 million lines, in five regions across the country until 2010 under a revenue-sharing scheme. The regions are Sumatra, West Java, Central Java, Yogyakarta, East Java, Kalimantan and eastern parts of Indonesia.

As of March 31 this year, Telkom and its five KSO partners operated a total of 5.65 million lines, consisting of 3.04 million lines in Telkom's regions in Jakarta and parts of West Java and 2.61 million line in the KSO partners' regions.

Telkom installed approximately 21,937 new lines and its KSO partners installed 53,116 lines during the first quarter of 1999. This total number of lines installed in the first quarter of this year was 43.3 percent lower than in the same period last year.

Due to the economic crisis, Telkom and its KSO partners have lost approximately 69,676 customers -- of which 69.79 percent were residential subscribers, 29.86 percent were business subscribers and 0.35 percent were social subscribers. The customers canceled their subscriptions during the period of January to March this year. (cst)