Citibank: China Unicom's (00762) third quarter results are broadly in line with expectations

The Zhitong Finance App learned that Citibank released a research report saying that China Unicom (00762)'s revenue for the third quarter of this year increased 1% year-on-year to 93.3 billion yuan, roughly in line with the bank's expectations of a 1% increase and the same market expectations, but fell 5% from quarter to quarter; the bank maintained China Unicom's H share “buy” rating and target price of HK$7.

According to the bank, China Unicom's EBITDA for the third quarter was 22.8 billion yuan, in line with the bank's and market expectations, but it fell 10% year on year and 1% from quarter to quarter; EBITDA profit margin fell 2.9 percentage points year on year to 24.4%, mainly affected by VAT.

Net profit of $3,812 billion was lower than the bank's forecast of 9% and market expectations of 5%, respectively. The year-on-year decrease was 31%, the quarterly decline was 17%, and the net profit margin was 4.1%, down 1.9 percentage points year-on-year; the lower profit was mainly due to lower than expected non-operating income.

Revenue for the first nine months rose moderately 0.6% year over year to 294.6 billion yuan due to environmental challenges in the communications industry. Among them, computing power and international business revenue increased by 12.2% and 14.5%, respectively, reflecting the company's continued transformation to artificial intelligence infrastructure services.