SINGAPORE (Nov 14): Singapore Telecommunications saw a slight drop in revenues for 2QFY2020, but recorded a loss of $668 million, as it made provision for a huge licence fee and spectrum usage charges levied on the entire India mobile industry by its regulator.
Bharti Airtel, Singtel’s associate in India, was slapped with a fee and charges of US$3 billion ($5.5 billion). This is slightly less than Vodafone’s Indian unit, which was charged US$4 billion. The license fee and spectrum usage charges come following the telcos' long-running dispute with India's Department of Telecommunications over the definition of “adjusted gross revenue”.
Singtel’s share of Airtel's fee and charges amounts to some $1.9 billion. Without the provision, its earnings would have risen 3% y-o-y to $737 million, says Chua Sock Koong, Singtel’s group CEO at a late evening results briefing on Thursday. For more than a decade, Singtel had held its earnings briefing before the stock market opened for trading.
