China Telecom (00728) 9-month profit up 7.2% to Rmb17.54bn

    China Telecom (00728) said its profit attributable to equity holders for the first three quarters of 2016 rose 7.2% year-on-year to Rmb17,543 million.
  Operating revenues amounted to Rmb263,816 million, representing an increase of 7.1% over the same period of last year. Service revenues were Rmb233,494 million, an increase of 5.6% over the same period of last year.
  EBITDA was Rmb76,033 million, a decline of 0.6% over the same period of last year. EBITDA margin (EBITDA divided by service revenues) was 32.6%.
   The number of mobile subscribers of the Group reached about 212 million, representing a net addition of 14.59 million; of which the number of 4G terminal users reached 107 million, representing a net addition of 49.03 million. Meanwhile, the handset data traffic reached 833kTB, representing an increase of 127% over the same period of last year. The monthly average data traffic per 4G user achieved rapid growth and reached 920MB. The average mobile service revenue per user per month (ARPU) in the first three quarters of 2016 remained steady with slight increase as compared to that for the full year of last year.