Operators “Three Kingdoms kill”: performance stops falling and rebounds, 5g remains to be realized

Recently, the three major operators have announced the first half of 2020 performance. Compared with the semi annual report in 2019, it can be said that it is gradually out of the financial growth crisis. < p > < p > take China Mobile, which has the worst semi annual report in 2019 as an example, its revenue has stopped falling and its net profit has also declined by 14.6% in the same period of last year to a slight drop of 0.5% this year. However, due to different strategies in 5g investment and operation, the pattern of the three operators is also changing. According to the total number of users and fixed broadband users, China Unicom has been overtaken by China Telecom in an all-round way; in addition, it is worth noting that the total number of 5g users of China Mobile and China Telecom has reached 108 million, and China Unicom has not published the number of 5g users so far. In the first half of this year, China Mobile’s revenue was 389.9 billion yuan, a slight increase of 0.1% year-on-year. Net profit was 55.77 billion yuan, down 0.5% year on year; China Unicom’s revenue was 150.397 billion yuan, up 3.8% year on year. Net profit was 3.344 billion yuan, up 10.9% year on year; China Telecom’s revenue was 193.803 billion yuan, up 1.7% year on year. The net profit was 13.949 billion yuan, up 0.3% year on year. In terms of profitability, the total net profit of the three enterprises in the first half of the year was 77.3 billion yuan, equivalent to an average daily profit of 424 million yuan. < / P > < p > in the first half of 2019, the three operators all fell into the bottleneck of growth, and the overall revenue of the group declined year-on-year due to the disappearance of flow dividend, intensified industry competition, and speed-up and fee reduction. What’s more, China Mobile even experienced a decline in revenue, telecommunication service revenue and net profit, the worst performance in nearly a decade. < p > < p > in the first half of this year, China Mobile reversed the downward trend in revenue and communication service income, and narrowed sharply in the year-on-year decline of net profit, and basically went back to the growth track. From the perspective of China Mobile’s four major market revenues, the income from personal market fell by 2.6% year-on-year, and still accounted for 70.8% of the communication service income; however, the household market income and the government enterprise market income which China Mobile mainly cultivated increased by 18.1% and 18.4% respectively, which has become the main engine of the company’s income growth. Taking government enterprise business as an example, the revenue of mobile cloud in the first half of this year reached 4.46 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 556.4%; the number of government and enterprise customers in the first half of the year reached 11.29 million, a net increase of 1.01 million over the end of 2019. < / P > < p > the other two China Unicom and China Telecom also emerged from the decline in revenue in the first half of 2019. The most eye-catching data growth is likely to be China Unicom. In the first half of 2019, the net profit increased by 16.32% year-on-year, and maintained a high-speed growth of 10.9% in the first half of this year. This is related to the development strategy chosen by China Unicom. Wang Xiaochu, chairman of China Unicom, summed it up as “continuous and good capital expenditure control and efficient operation” in the conference call. Among them, we should control 5g capital expenditure, strictly control user development costs, and clean up inefficient products and channels. < p > < p > China Unicom used to lead China Telecom in the number of mobile users, but the situation changed for the first time in July 2019. In July 2019, China Telecom has a net increase of 2.32 million mobile users, with a cumulative number of 325.8 million users; while China Unicom has a net increase of 109000 mobile users, with a total of 324462 million. So far, China Telecom surpassed China Unicom in the number of mobile users for the first time and became the second largest operator. According to the data of the first half of this year, this trend is still continuing. By the end of June 2020, the number of mobile users of China Mobile reached 887 million, ranking first; the total number of mobile account users of China Unicom was 309.5 million, a decrease of 8.947 million compared with the end of last year; while the number of mobile users of China Telecom reached 343 million, a net increase of 7.9 million. < / P > < p > in terms of the number of mobile users, China Telecom still maintains a growth trend while surpassing China Unicom, while China Unicom has a net decrease of nearly 9 million users. < / P > < p > in fact, China Unicom was once the second largest in the industry in terms of fixed broadband services. Fixed broadband service has always been an advantage of China Telecom. Since 2015, China Mobile expanded its broadband service, it surpassed China Unicom in the second half of 2016. In the first three quarters of 2018, China Mobile surpassed China Telecom in broadband users for the first time and became the leader of the broadband market. According to the data in the first half of this year, China Mobile’s home broadband customers increased by 8.95 million, reaching 181 million; China Telecom’s broadband users were 154 million; and China Unicom’s broadband users were 85.88 million. < / P > < p > it is not only the number of mobile users and broadband users, but also the number of 5g users that the three enterprises are striving for. < / P > < p > since this year, the three operators have been vigorously promoting the upgrading of existing users to 5g users. As of June this year, China Mobile’s 5g package customers have reached 70.2 million, while China Telecom’s 5g package customers have reached 37.84 million, with a total of 108 million. China Mobile has even set a target of more than 100 million customers with 5g packages for the whole year. However, China Unicom has not released the target of 5g users this year and the specific number of 5g subscribers. Wang Xiaochu, chairman of China Unicom, also said on the conference call that this was caused by the company’s initiative to adjust the development strategy of mobile business, from focusing on the number of users to focusing on the quality and value of user development. < / P > < p > “if there is adjustment, we have to endure the pain. In the first half of the year, mobile users lost nearly 9 million, and the service income decreased by 2.2 billion yuan year-on-year. However, the sales expenses were saved by 2.6 billion yuan on a year-on-year basis. In the second quarter, mobile service revenue and ARPU of mobile users have both stopped falling and rebounded, increasing by 3% and 4% respectively He said. In terms of the number of 5g users, China Unicom’s official attitude is to “promote 5g package service in a rhythmic and targeted way”. Wang Xiaochu said that in the second half of this year, with the gradual maturity of 5g network, terminals and applications, the company can accelerate the development of 5g users. It is understood that China Mobile’s 5g capital expenditure in the first half of the year is 55.2 billion yuan, and the plan for the whole year of 2020 is 105 billion yuan. By the end of June 2020, China Mobile has opened 188000 5g base stations in more than 50 cities in China. China Mobile has also adjusted the target of 5g new base stations from 250000 to 300000 this year. In the first half of the year, China Telecom invested 20.2 billion yuan in 5g, completed and opened about 80000 5g base stations and nearly 210000 stations in use; China Unicom spent about 12.6 billion yuan on 5g capital in the first half of the year, which was 35 billion yuan in the whole year. As of the first half of the year, China Unicom has accumulated about 210000 5g base stations, including more than 100000 stations built by itself. < / P > < p > compared with the number of 5g base stations available, since China Telecom and China Unicom have started co construction and sharing, the two sides have realized the investment achievements of China Mobile 55.2 billion yuan at the construction cost of 20.2 billion yuan and 12.6 billion yuan respectively. The advantages of co construction and sharing can be seen. < / P > < p > China Mobile is also joining forces to reduce 5g construction costs. In May this year, China Mobile announced that it had signed a 5g co construction and sharing framework agreement with China Radio and television, which formally formed a 2 + 2 market pattern in China’s operator market. However, the cooperation between China Mobile and China Radio and television has not progressed as fast as expected. Yang Jie, chairman of China Mobile, said on the conference call that the two sides are currently discussing the details of the cooperation and have no plans to establish a joint venture. The preliminary assumption is that the two sides will jointly determine the plan. China Mobile will undertake the construction and operation tasks and radio and television will share the cost. However, the network construction deployment will not be implemented until next year. < / P > < p > in fact, in terms of the current 5g network construction, China has already taken the lead in the world. Guo Ping, chairman in office of Huawei, pointed out a few days ago that the global 5g deployment has come to an end, and the focus of the next stage is to develop industrial applications and release 5g network dividends. < / P > < p > at present, the value mining of the three operators in 5g personal users has been initially revealed. China Telecom said that 5g business continued to drive the growth of mobile users’ value, and ARPU of mobile users stabilized and rebounded compared with the second half of last year, and the year-on-year decline gradually slowed down; China Mobile also revealed that its 5g ARPU increased by 5.9% compared with that before the relocation. However, for operators, the biggest value of 5g may be industry users, which is also a new blue ocean for operators’ future performance growth. However, 5g industry applications are still in the early stage of commercialization, especially the SA (independent Networking) capability required by industry applications has not yet been commercialized on a large scale nationwide. < / P > < p > the three major operators have begun to speed up the exploration of industrial application realization. For example, China Mobile launched three systems of 5g private network products, technology and operation in July this year, and its 5g private network includes three modes of “preferential, exclusive and exclusive”; China Unicom also released three “5g private network products” and two “5g dedicated line G’s important foundation for the commercialization of vertical industries at the 5g + industrial Internet Promotion Conference on August 18.