China Mobile Ltd, the world's largest mobile services provider by customer base, is ready for an initial public offering (IPO) on the mainland stock market, said Wang Jianzhou, chairman of the company, China Securities Journal reported on Tuesday.
Wang did not disclose whether the company will raise the dividend payout ratio, saying that China Mobile had announced a ratio of 43 percent earlier this year, the report said.
China Mobile's operating income had reached to 352.6 billion yuan ($52.9 billion) in the first three quarters, up 7.8 percent year-on-year, the report said.
At an executive meeting of the State Council held on Nov 3, the central government decided to levy 15 percent of the company's profit instead of 10 percent.
The company will face more challenges when the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced that China will set up a new program in northern Tianjin municipality and southern Hainan province, which will allow mobile users to shift from one operator to another without changing their cell phone numbers.
CCTV ad auction draws record bidsHowever, an analyst from First Capital said that the profit growth space for reduced charges is limited and future business growth will come from data services. As of the end of September, China Mobile has 560 million subscribers, 47.5 million of which were 3G users, according to the report.
China Mobile will pay more attention to increasing data service revenues in order to offset the profit loss from voice communication services, Wang said.
In addition, Wang said China Mobile is in progress of building TD-LTE networks, a new standard of mobile network technology.
He said TD-LTE had progressed faster than expected, mainly because of the massive growth in data services on the mainland and the rapid spread of smartphones.
Industry insiders said that the operator will test the new network in Xiamen, Zhuhai and Qingdao.
