China United Telecommunications Corp Ltd (China Unicom), the country's second-largest mobile phone carrier, posted Monday a net profit of 2.33 billion yuan (US$280 million), up 6.3 percent from the previous year.

The A-share company would have reported a net profit of 2.75 billion yuan (US$331 million) excluding the impact of write-downs and losses on the sale of its paging business, according to its financial report.

It sold Guoxin Paging to focus on expanding its mobile phone business last year.

"Despite a lot of difficulties last year, we maintained a high growth momentum," said Wang Jianzhou, the company's board chairman and president.

It reported revenues for its main businesses last year, which reached 59.8 billion yuan (US$7.2 billion), up 31.2 percent from a year earlier.

Pre-tax profits for 2003 stood at 24.8 billion yuan (US$2.98 billion), registered a growth of 7.5 percent from the previous year.

Profits earned per share increased to 0.118 yuan from 0.1 yuan.

In its financial reports, the company said free cash flow made positive progress for the first time, reaching 5.51 billion yuan (US$663 million) last year.

Revenue from its mobile telecommunications was 53.8 billion yuan (US$6.48 billion), up 35.6 percent from the previous year.

The company acquired nine provincial networks from its State-owned parent at the beginning of 2003, and another nine networks this January, giving it coverage across nearly all of China.

Company figures indicated that by the end of last year, it had recruited more than 80 million mobile phone subscribers, up 35.4 percent from the previous year.

For CDMA subscribers, the figure was 16.9 million, up 170.8 percent from the previous year.

Revenue from its long-distance calling, data and Internet businesses contributed a total of 4.55 billion yuan (US$548 million), up 12.7 percent from the previous year.

"Besides the GSM service, CDMA service has become a major driving factor for the company's revenue growth," stressed Wang.

According to Wang, the CDMA business began to make profits at the end of the third quarter last year, which made the losses for its operation decline to 320 million yuan (US$38.5 million) last year from 1.5 billion yuan (US$180 million) in 2002.

However, the ARPU (average revenue per user) for CDMA subscribers dropped from 172.2 yuan (US$20.7) in 2002 to 128.4 yuan (US$15.4) last year, the report said.

"We are aiming to make the whole CDMA business profitable this year," Wang said.

"We are striving to take better advantage of CDMA technologies to come out with more wireless data and value-added telecom services to our customers."

In order to differentiate its services in China, Wang said, the company is to kick off its "World Wind" phone services very soon to give the market a strong shot in arms.

The service will work on both GSM and CDMA mobile networks in China and also operate in many other countries.

(China Daily March 30, 2004)