Robi’s Q1 profit rises 17.6% to Tk 125.5 crore

The revenue of Robi Axiata, the country's second-largest mobile operator, declined slightly in the first quarter of this year, while its profit increased.

Robi's revenue dropped by 7 percent year-on-year to Tk 2,341.1 crore in the January–March quarter of 2025.

The company's voice revenue declined by 0.7 percent, while data revenue saw a year-on-year decline of 11.4 percent.

However, its profit after tax for the first quarter stood at Tk 125.5 crore, posting a 17.6 percent rise year-on-year.

The operator said sustained data price reductions have taken a toll on Robi's financial performance in the first quarter of the year.

It also pointed to the prolonged economic downturn, which continues to impact the financial health of the entire telecom industry.

Robi reported that it had to contribute 70 percent of its Q1 2025 revenue to the government exchequer in various forms, further worsening its financial situation.

By the end of the quarter, Robi's active subscriber base stood at 5.64 crore, marking a quarter-on-quarter drop of 3.7 lakh and a year-on-year drop of 17 lakh.

The number of internet subscribers of the operator reached 4.25 crore, while its 4G user base stood at 3.67 crore.

Around 75.5 percent of Robi's active subscribers were internet users, and 65 percent were 4G users, making it the industry leader in both categories in terms of the proportion of active subscribers.

Following the increase in SIM tax from Tk 200 to Tk 300 in the last national budget, Robi has been cautiously developing its new customer acquisition strategy to recover the subscriber losses it experienced during last year's political unrest, it said in a statement.

By the end of the first quarter of 2025, Robi had extended 4G coverage to 98.97 percent of the population, operating over 18,000 4G sites.

The company invested Tk 74.7 crore in capital expenditure during the quarter.

Average monthly data usage per user rose by 4.3 percent quarter-on-quarter and 18.1 percent year-on-year.

In total, Robi paid Tk 1,627.9 crore to the government exchequer in the January-March quarter, which amounted to 70 percent of its revenue for the quarter.

"Over the last year, we have reduced our data price by around 20 percent," said M Riyaaz Rasheed, Robi's acting CEO and chief financial officer.

"Though this helped to fuel data consumption growth, it failed to support our revenue growth momentum. The sustained economic downturn has only made the situation worse for the entire industry."

"This challenging backdrop, high inflation, and some unavoidable cost escalation cut into our profit figure," said Rasheed.

"Given the high SIM tax, we opted to move cautiously on new customer acquisition to ensure balanced growth. While we remain confident that the economy will regain its strength shortly, we now have enough evidence before us to be alarmed at the current low level of data price," he said.