China Unicom profit boosted by sale of CDMA business

Telecoms product sales grew 76%

China Unicom has reported a 58.2% jump in net income to CNY 33.91 billion ($4.9 billion) for fiscal 2008, compared to CNY 21.4 billion ($3.1 billion) in 2007, on revenue down 1.2% at CNY 148.9 billion ($21.7 billion).

It attributed the jump in profit to a one-time gain of CNY 26.1 billion ($3.8 billion) related to the disposal of its CDMA business to China Telecom. Operating income fell 70.1% to CNY 8.1 billion ($1.1 billion), and EBITDA was down 6.5% at CNY 66.9 billion ($9.7 billion). Diluted EPS grew 53.8% to CNY 1.43 ($0.20).

The company said GSM revenue grew 3.4% to CNY 64.7 billion ($9.4 billion, while fixed-line revenue Fell 5.3% to CNY 82.5 billion ($12.1 billion), and telecoms product sales grew 76% to CNY 1.6 billion ($241.9m).

Chang Xiaobing, chairman and chief executive at China Unicom, said: Looking forward to 2009, the company plans to capture every opportunity in 3G business development, further expanding its subscriber base, optimizing subscriber structure, and facilitating the development of upgrading fixed-line and mobile communications in order to realize the objective of creating new advantages through consolidation to achieve new developments in 3G.

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