Gpacket ... May10

It had invested RM506 million in capital expenditure to date (since the start of 2008), and will be investing an additional RM500 million over the next two years (2011-2012) for which they are fully funded through the group’s cash and bank (borrowing) and vendor funding.

Puan said revenue and Ebitda trends were in line with goals to turn Ebitda positive by end-2010.

Green Packet’s 4G WiMAX division, Packet One (P1) Networks, ended the first quarter with 25% more subscribers to 175,000 from 140,000 in the previous quarter. Its network coverage has increased to 38.3% population coverage in Peninsular Malaysia.

Green Packet will invest up to RM200 million by year-end (2010) in capital expenditure targeting 45% population coverage (or 12.6 million people).

The group expects its total subscriber numbers to double in 2010 from end-2009 levels to about 280,000 subscribers with an average revenue per user (ARPU) of RM80.

In the first half of the year, P1 will concentrate on improving network performance with the aim of reducing network disruption to below 5% by 3QFY2010. In the second half, the company will ramp up its subscriber acquisition programme in conjunction with the launch of new netbook and notebook models embedded with WiMAX chipsets by Dell, Lenovo, Acer, Asus and Toshiba.

Future plans for P1 will be the rollout of services in East Malaysia by the first half of next year (2010).

Green Packet Bhd’s net loss almost doubled to RM44.8 million for the first quarter ended March 31, 2010 (1QFY10) from RM22.6 million a year ago.

However, its revenue jumped 109% to RM86.8 million from the first quarter last year. Loss per share was 6.7 sen compared with 5.6 sen previously.

On a quarterly basis, the company’s net loss narrowed by over 50% from RM94.5 million in 4QFY09 due to stronger revenue growth and lower operating costs.

Its operating losses narrowed 55% to RM43.5 million compared with the previous quarter while earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (Ebitda) improved 47% to a loss of RM29.8 million from RM56.2 million.