Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Company, also known as du, announced a 2.5 per cent year-on-year increase in second-quarter profits after royalty payments to Dh464 million. Second-quarter revenue fell, however, by 4.8 per cent year-on-year to Dh3.19 billion. The result means that for the first half of 2019, the company declared a 5.4 per cent year-on-year decline in net profit of Dh913 million for the first half of 2019, while revenue also fell by 5.3 per cent to Dh6.33bn in the same period. Fixed line customers grew by 2.4 per cent to 773,000 during the second quarter although the number of mobile subscribers slipped 8.9 per cent to just over 7.2 million. EITC’s chief executive, Osman Sultan described the company’s performance as “solid”. He said that if one-off changes to adjust for changing accounting standards last year were stripped out, its second-quarter profit was 5.5 per cent higher year-on-year. “Our revenues were impacted by industry-wide challenges, particularly the continued pressure on voice revenues,” Mr Sultan said. He said the lower revenue in Q2 was the result of a 6.8 per cent decrease in mobile revenue to Dh1.69bn, “which was partially offset by the continued strong growth in our fixed revenue of 5.8 per cent” to Dh617m. The fall in mobile subscribers was attributed to a clean-up of its prepaid customer base as a result of the “My Number My Identity” campaign linking prepaid customers to valid Emirates ID cards. Mr Sultan also said du continued to enjoy a “strong capital position”, which enabled it to spend Dh467m on upgrading its network and other capabilities during the first half of the year. The telecoms operator said it had also appointed Kais Ben Hamida as its new chief financial officer earlier this month.
