This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily on January 25, 2019

KUALA LUMPUR: DiGi.com Bhd’s net profit grew 4.9% in its fourth quarter ended Dec 31, 2018 (4QFY18) to RM377.80 million, from RM360.08 million a year ago, due to solid postpaid growth and efficient cost management.

Revenue for 4QFY18 grew 1.8% to RM1.67 billion, from RM1.64 billion in the same quarter in the previous year, due to higher demand for its postpaid plans, its Bursa Malaysia filing today showed.

DiGi’s board of directors declared a fourth interim dividend of 4.8 sen per share, payable on March 29. This brings its full FY18 dividend payout to 19.6 sen, versus 18.8 sen for FY17.

For the full year, DiGi’s net profit rose 4.3% to RM1.54 billion from RM1.48 billion in FY17, while revenue grew 2.9% to RM6.53 billion from RM6.34 billion.

The group said it achieved a five-year high postpaid revenue growth of 14.8% to close FY18 at RM2.52 billion, which “significantly contributed to improved service revenue trajectory”. Postpaid revenue contributed 42.5% to the group’s total FY18 service revenue of RM5.92 billion.

Its overall subscriber base was trimmed to 11.7 million, “as a flow through from sim card contraction amongst legacy prepaid subscribers”, though Internet subscribers continued to strengthen to 9.2 million or 78.6% of subscriber base. Average revenue per user was kept steady at RM41 as at end-FY18.

For FY19, DiGi said it is confident of maintaining service revenue and guided for a low single-digit earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation growth.