Despite a 16% year-on-year (YoY) growth in overall revenues in local currency, Jazz’s revenue decreased 20.4% in USD terms during the first quarter of 2023, mainly due to 47% YoY PKR devaluation. Additionally, margins were affected by a significant increase in business costs, including an 8.3 p.p. YoY increase in interest rates, and a YoY increase of around 80% and 32% in fuel and electricity costs, respectively.
Despite these macroeconomic challenges, Jazz continues to lead the market with a focus on driving digital inclusion and investing PKR 3.7 billion in 1Q23 mainly under its “4G for all” ambition, bringing its overall investment in Pakistan to USD 10.4 billion.
A majority of its capital expenditure during the last year was on the addition of more than 1,000 new 4G sites reflecting the company’s commitment to ensure consistent improvement in quality of service for its customers. This network expansion played a key role in increasing Jazz’s 4G customer base by 17.4% YoY, reaching 43.1 million, while its overall subscriber base reached 73.7 million.
Jazz CEO Aamir Ibrahim stated, “While we continue to invest in expanding the reach and capacity of our 4G network and driving the digital ecosystem, the financial health of the telecom industry is severely impacted due to an unprecedented rise in the cost of operations – primarily fuel, electricity, interest, and forex rates.
In the current digital emergency, we are seeking urgent policy interventions to ensure that we can continue to provide robust broadband for Pakistan’s growing needs as a digitally progressive country. This includes delinking the spectrum price from the US dollar, staggering license payments over ten annual installments instead of five, and implementing a regulatory approach to encourage disciplined inflationary pricing.”
