Emirates Integrated Telecommunications, or du, plans to accelerate its investments in mobile networks and other infrastructure by investing up to Dh1.8 billion in 2015, a top official said.
This compares with a capital expenditure of Dh1.4 billion in 2014 and “most of it will go in mobile networks”, Othman Sultan, du’s Chief Executive Officer, at du said in a conference call on Thursday.
“The company is continuing to focus on core business and we always want to be a better telco and we are continuing our journey to become more integrated ICT [Information and Communications Technology] player. We would see a more strategic direction developing an integrated approach of becoming an ICT player in the course of 3-5 years,” he added.
“Once 5G technology becomes mature you would see the UAE becoming one of the first having it operated, and this is in line with the government’s objective to take this country at the fore front of digital capabilities,” Sultan said.
Free cash flow reached Dh2.19 billion in 2014 compared to Dh2.33 billion last year due to royalty increase. This year the company would pay Dh300 million more royalty compared to what it paid last year.
“The company is cash rich. For ensuring the needs of the company do we need to raise any money, the answer is clearly no. There is no need for our current business or to meet any obligations or royalties,” Sultan said. “We always look at conditions. We might consider that we have better conditions in current loans and exchange our loans because we are getting better interest rates etc”
The company, which has cash of more than Dh6 billion, would play a pivotal role and add value to UAE government’s initiative of smart government and Dubai smart city initiative.
“We are pursuing our strong presence in data centres and arrangements that we have and leveraging of the stakes that we took and that is helping us in terms of cost efficiency and moving a lot of the infrastructure and this is allowing us to have a value proposition to the market that is beyond connectivity,” Sultan said.
No acquisitions
“We are not actively pursuing any expansion of business beyond the geography of the UAE. Of course, we always keep an eye. We believe that there would be some consolidation or deconsolidation that would happen, but it is clear that we are not pursuing this actively as part of our strategy,” Sultan said.
Meanwhile, company’s ARPU (average revenue per user) was lifted slightly in the fourth quarter, by 5.6% to Dh109.3 per user from Dh103.5 per user in the same quarter last year, bucking the industry trend of an overall decline in ARPU. The ARPU levels this year reached Dh103 including roaming … while excluding roaming it stood at Dh101.7.
Gulf News 2015. All rights reserved.
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