Telkom Q1 net profit flat due to higher costs

Telekomunikasi Indonesia , Indonesia's biggest telecommunications firm, said on Friday its first-quarter 2011 net profit rose just 1.4 percent due to higher marketing and operating costs.

The firm's first-quarter net profit was 2.83 trillion Indonesian rupiah ($329.7 million), compared with 2.79 trillion rupiah in the same period a year earlier, it said in a statement.
Telkom, which expects subscribers to grow by 10 to 12 million this year, breached the 100 million subscribers level this month. It said earlier this month that it expects revenue to grow about 10 percent this year as the domestic market is maturing.

It reported first-quarter revenue of 16.71 trillion rupiah. That compared with revenue of 16.36 trillion rupiah in the year-ago period.
Analysts forecast Telkom's 2011 net profit to rise 7 percent to 12.34 trillion rupiah, according to Thomson Reuters data.

Shares in Telkom were up 0.7 percent ahead of the results, and have fallen more than 7 percent in the first quarter to underperform a Jakarta index down around 0.7 percent in the same period. Source: Reuters