On August 20, China Telecom announced its interim results for the year. During the reporting period, China Telecom achieved an operating revenue of RMB 266 billion, representing a year-on-year increase of 2.8%. Of this, service revenue amounted to RMB 246.2 billion, up 4.3% year-on-year. The net profit stood at RMB 21.8 billion, a year-on-year increase of 8.2%, with the net profit excluding non-recurring items at RMB 21.7 billion, up 6.0% year-on-year. The basic earnings per share were RMB 0.24. Capital expenditure totaled RMB 47.2 billion.
In the first half of 2024, China Telecom's fundamental business revenue maintained robust growth, with application innovation driving value enhancement. User value continued to improve, and industrial digitalization revenue showed strong growth, leading to a steady improvement in development quality.
In the first half of the year, China Telecom's mobile communication service revenue reached RMB 105.2 billion, a year-on-year increase of 3.6%. Within this, mobile value-added and application revenue reached RMB 18.1 billion, up 17.1% year-on-year. The number of mobile users increased by 9.08 million, bringing the total to 417 million users, with the penetration rate of 5G network users up 14.3 percentage points year-on-year. The ARPU (average revenue per user) for mobile users reached RMB 46.3.
Fixed-line and smart home service revenue totaled RMB 64 billion, representing a year-on-year increase of 3.2%. Smart home business revenue reached RMB 10.7 billion, up 14.4% year-on-year. The number of broadband users saw a net increase of 3.19 million, reaching 193 million users, with a comprehensive broadband ARPU of RMB 48.3.
Revenue from industrial digitalization reached RMB 73.7 billion, a year-on-year increase of 7.2%, accounting for 30.0% of service revenue, up 0.8 percentage points year-on-year. Tianyi Cloud's revenue stood at RMB 55.2 billion, up 20.4% year-on-year.
China Telecom continued to deepen its co-construction and sharing efforts, creating a high-quality network with coordinated high, medium, and low frequencies, and an integrated 5G/4G network. The number of 5G base stations exceeded 1.31 million, achieving continuous coverage in all towns and above nationwide. The company continued to strengthen its 5G-A strategic layout, comprehensively promoting 5G-A capability upgrades, and jointly completing over a hundred city-scale deployments of Redcap and carrier aggregation. The number of 10GPON ports for gigabit optical networks exceeded 9 million, with an urban residential coverage rate of 94%. The 50GPON network was deployed to support the ten-gigabit access needs of key residential areas, industrial parks, and factories.
Additionally, China Telecom continuously increased its investment in technological innovation and R&D, which saw a year-on-year increase of 12.5%. The company focused on accelerating the construction of core research teams in strategic emerging industries, with the number of R&D personnel growing by 15.3% compared to the end of last year. A formation of a tech talent echelon consisting of scientists, chief experts, senior experts, and experts has basically taken shape, exceeding a scale of 10,000 members.
China Telecom places high importance on shareholder returns, striving to enhance profitability and cash flow generation capabilities. The board of directors has decided to continue distributing interim dividends in 2024, with cash distribution exceeding 70% of the company's net profit attributable to shareholders for the first half of the year, or RMB 0.1671 per share (inclusive of tax), representing a year-on-year increase of 16.7%. Starting from 2024, the company plans to gradually increase the cash distribution of profits to over 75% of the net profit attributable to shareholders within three years, continuing to create greater value for shareholders.
