Japan's KDDI grew its annual profit nearly 20%, despite significant costs incurred due to the Japanese earthquake and tsunami.
The operator made a profit of 255.1 billion yen (€2.1 billion) in the year to end March, despite losses estimated at 17.6 billion yen associated with repairing damaged infrastructure following the natural disasters in March. KDDI lost 1,933 base stations and 390,000 fixed line services to the events, but today has restored all but 124 base stations and 2,237 fixed lines.
With the take down happening so late in KDDI’s fiscal 2011, earnings were largely stable on 2010, with Ebitda up 1% to 936.3 billion yen and revenues stable at 3.44 trillion yen.
However, the firm forecasts a 2% fall in net profit and only a marginal increase in revenues for fiscal 2011, as it continues to recover from the disasters. So far the operator has focused on recovering the area of network coverage, with work in that phase due to be completed by end April. KDDI will then switch its focus to quality of service, planning to install 53 new base stations by end September.