HALF-YEAR GLOOM IN SINGAPORE In Singapore, StarHub’s 25th anniversary celebrations this year are laced with half-year gloom.

The country’s #1 broadband provider reported a grim first half; net profit was down 41.7% (even excluding non-recurring items, the company’s first-half net profit dropped 23% to S$62 million/US$45.9 million).

Entertainment revenue was down 9.1% to S$99.4 million/US$73.6 million; the official line is that entertainment remains “a key acquisition and bundling lever”.

Low-cost sim-only plans drove mobile subs up 8.2% year on year. But mobile revenues were hard hit by declining roaming fees, IDD, VAS and excess data usage.

Under banner headlines of “Rightsizing Our Cost Structure – Positioning StarHub for Scalable and Sustainable Growth”, the company talked about decommissioning legacy stacks from next year, efficiency and centralisation, as well as “customer experience-led simplification of product lines and omnichannel optimisation”.

StarHub’s total first-half revenue was S$1.1 billion/US$814 million – growth of 2.2% year-on-year.