TM share price falls as Indonesian unit falters...

PETALING JAYA: Telekom Malaysia Bhd's (TM) share price fell 40 sen to RM11, which contributed the most to the KL Composite Index's 11.17-point decline in an overall weak market yesterday.

TM shares slipped on reports that net profit registered by the group's subsidiary in Indonesia, PT Excelcomindo Pratama, fell 62% to about RM87mil last year.

Excelcomindo, the third biggest mobile-phone operator in Indonesia, said the loss included a withholding tax and a foreign exchange loss.

Meanwhile, TM, which is expected to announce its full year to Dec 31 results next week, is forecast to have posted a group net profit of about RM2.27bil last year, according to consensus estimates, compared with RM2.07bil in 2006.

Earlier this month, TM said it proposed to acquire Khazanah Nasional Bhd's stake in Excelcomindo, which would increase TM's stake in the Indonesian company to 83.8% from 66.9% currently.

Excelcomindo has more subscribers than Celcom (M) Bhd, TM's mobile-phone network operator in Malaysia. Excelcomindo has about 15.7 million subscribers against Celcom's seven million.

However, Celcom's average revenue per user (Arpu) of about RM60 is much higher than Excelcomindo's Arpu of about RM12.

On Monday, TM's Sri Lanka unit, Dialog Telekom Ltd, reported that its earnings fell 11% to about RM270mil last year, mainly due to start-up losses at its television subsidiary.

Dialog is the biggest mobile-phone operator in Sri Lanka, where India's biggest mobile-phone operator, Bharti Airtel Ltd, is expected to launch its services later this year.

Both Indonesia and Sri Lanka are expected to register strong growth in mobile-phone users this year although the industry Arpu could decline due to intense competition.