China Mobile kept 'buy' on subscriber growth - Daiwa Daiwa Institute of Research maintained a "buy" call on China Mobile with a six-month target price of 159.80 hkd, noting that the company's subscriber additions so far this year indicates that it could easily beat full-year projection.
China Mobile achieved an average net addition of 7.55 mln subscribers per month for the first four months of this year, against Daiwa's full-year assumption of 7.2 mln per month, it said.
"Even if we use China Mobile's monthly net-add guidance of 6.67 mln, our forecast net profit would be reduced by only 1.3 pct to 111.9 bln yuan, or 28.5 pct year-on-year growth," Daiwa analyst Marvin Lo said.
"We think the chance of China Mobile's monthly net adds dropping to 6.67 mln for the full-year 2008 is not high," Lo said, reasoning that mobile penetration in China at 42 pct is far from the 70 pct saturation point.
Added to this, China Unicom is not competing actively with China Mobile, he said, noting that China Mobile still has a share of 83 pct in net-subscriber additions. Moreover, China Telecom and China Netcom are not promoting personal handyphone systems (PHS), the analyst said.
Lo also added that Daiwa maintain its view that "management reshuffling would be unlikely to change the competitiveness of individual telecom companies."
He was referring to the expected industry restructuring in China.
At 11:50 am, China Mobile shares were down 1.3 hkd or 0.99 pct at 129.4 in Hong Kong.
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