Retain Overweight on China Unicom following FY11 results
While handset subsidies and other costs showed a seasonal pick-up, mobile market share continued to shift from
China Mobile (CM) to China Telecom (CT) and China Unicom (CU), with CM’s “incremental” mobile revenue share
falling below 50% for the first time since restructuring. Also, while the market has been concerned about rising
subsidies, overall G&A and subsidies ratio as % of mobile revenues have continued to decline.
Deep Dive into FY11 results: Three Key Themes
We dig deeper into the trends of FY11 results from all three telcos and conclude that:
1) Industry mobile revenue growth accelerated to >14% while fixed-line worsened, primarily due to a weak 4Q11 from
CT. CM’s share of “incremental” mobile revenue came in below 50% for the first time since restructuring as CT and CU
widened their 3G offerings and supported their marketing efforts with increasing subsidy budgets.
2) While CM maintained its dominant ~80% share of mobile voice traffic and revenue, its share of the rapidly growing
data market fell faster. Indeed, CM’s share of the mobile data market stood at 67%, or 12% lower than its voice share.
3) Opex grew faster than revenues across the board, although subsidies as % of revenue declined and subsidy per net
add also came down for CU and CM. The growth in opex came mainly from employee costs, SG&A and
interconnection costs.
China Telecommunications