KUALA LUMPUR (Oct 19): Maxis Bhd net profit for the third quarter ended Sept 30, 2016 rose to RM514 million from RM421 million a year earlier, as new plans launched in the previous quarter continued to gain momentum.

In a filing with the exchange today, the company said its revenue for the quarter was flat at RM2.16 billion.

Maxis declared a third interim single-tier tax-exempt dividend of 5 sen per share, to be paid on Dec 29.

In a statement accompanying the results, Maxis chief executive officer Morten Lundal said the company had a solid operational and financial progress for the quarter.

“From an average of 2.5GB of data consumed per month last quarter, our customers are now using 3.1GB per month on average, especially driven by video usage,” he said.

Lundal said the telecommunications giant had a great response from its auto-upgrade of data for MaxisONE plan (MOP) customers and shareable DataPool introduced last quarter.

He said that in the last 12 months alone, Maxis added over 800,000 MOP customers, with a base now approaching 1.5 million.

“For prepaid, Hotlink FAST is gaining traction and attracting high ARPU customers. More than 1 million customers are already on this data-rich plan, nearly double the number from a quarter ago. 

“Quality is becoming critical for so many Malaysians and great customer experience matters, which is why we are building further our 4G leadership, investing more than anyone else in the network.

“We are making good progress towards our ambition to be a fully digitalised Maxis to deliver the best digital experience to our customers,” he said.