SLT posts Rs. 3.1b profit in first half

Sri Lanka Telecom, the nation’s number one integrated communications service provider recently announced its first half 2008 financial results which confirmed a phenomenal growth of revenues and profits.

Year on year, the group has achieved a growth of 25% in its net profit after tax of Rs. 3,163m.

Expressing her views on first half 2008 results SLT Chairperson Leisha De Silva Chandrasena said “Because of our strong presence in diversified business sectors SLT group has been able to achieve an overall growth despite the reduction of tariff of fixed line services last year.

Specially, our mobile arm Mobitel, plays a vital role strengthening the group position today. This is why we are investing more in new business segments to build up more players within the group for tomorrow. Therefore, our future is very stable”.

In achieving these results the revenue of the group has increased by 13%, to Rs. 23,358 m.

More new connections were to counteract the revenue losses incurred as a result of the 9.02% tariff reduction introduced in November 2007. However, the new connections not achieved expected targets has impacted on PSTN and CDMA revenues to drop by 3% and 7% respectively.

However phenomenal growth of 69% Mobitel revenue and 55% growth of data oriented services of SLT have contributed to grew revenues by 13% to Rs. 23,358 million after recovering the impact of tariff reduction.

This proves the groups sustainability in the face of competition and changes in market conditions.

The group has been able to maintain its operating expenditure increase at 17% to Rs. 11,460 million, despite high inflationary effects.

The overall personnel cost of the group has increased due to salary increments during the year as well as new recruitments. The company has experienced a slight increase in bad debts due to CDMA new connections given on instalment basis.

Mobitel expenses have also risen due to an increase in personnel and advertising costs.

The increase in personnel cost was due to new recruitment and salary increments. SLT is the only wire line service provider in Sri Lanka, having an island wide customer base of nearly 940,000.