BEIJING, March 10 (Xinhua) -- China Telecom Corporation Limited (00728.HK; CHA.NYSE), one of the three telecom giants in China, announced late Tuesday that the company mulled applying for a maximum 12.09 billion A-share issues, reported Xinhua-run financial information platform Xinhua Finance.
China Telecom said it took the move to seize digital development opportunities and expand its financing channels for boosting implementation of related strategies.
According to the company, the planned A-share offerings are equivalent to no more than 13 percent of its total capital stock issued after the issuance and before exercising of the overallotment option.
Proceeds from the A-share public offerings will be used in China Telecom's 5G industrial internet program, cloud internet integration program and R&D program for sci-tech innovation.
In 2020, the Chinese telecom operator realized revenues of 393.56 billion yuan, up 4.7 percent year on year, contributed mainly by 373.79 billion yuan of service incomes, up 4.5 percent year on year.
The company's earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) was 118.88 billion yuan, up 1.4 percent from 2019 and profits attributable to shareholders was 20.85 billion yuan, up 1.6 percent year on year.
Its earnings per share stood at 0.26 yuan in 2020, with proposed final dividend at 0.125 Hong Kong dollars per share.
China Telecom's 5G public service business goes ahead with a good start, helping the company valuably expand by its mobile user market. By the end of 2020, the company saw its mobile users up to 351 million, with a net increase of 15.45 million from 2019.
Apart from these, China Telecom achieved rapid development in digitalization, reaping 84.0 billion yuan income and all network cloud services contributed 13.8 billion yuan to incomes.
The company said the market share of its network cloud service business continued to rank high among all market players in China's publicly-owned cloud service market. (Edited by Duan Jing with Xinhua Silk Road, duanjing@xinhua.org)
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