Starhub

Starhub: 3Q12 results saw bottom-line which was ahead of estimates. Net profit at $96.2m, +27% yoy, while Rev at $585.9m, +2.4% yoy driven by higher service revenue and sales of equipment. Post-paid mobile services rev for the qtr at $2.8m, -1.2% yoy due to lower rev from interconnect operators. Average revenue per user (ARPU) was flat yoy at $74 / month, with non-voice service contribution to ARPU rising from 38.4% in 3Q the yr before to 42.7%. Grp which introduced tiered data pricing earlier this yr, is optimistic about the potential of monetizing data, expecting some improvement in rev in 2013 and 2014. About 20% of the users use the very basic package of 2 GB. Add since smartphones were introduced in 2009, StarHub has seen typical monthly data usage double from just below half a GB to almost one GB today. Pay-TV revenue for the qtr stood at $99.2m, +6.2% yoy, due to the $2 mthly subscription price increase that has been in place since Aug last yr. Grp however conceded that StarHub's pay-TV segment could see higher churn rates over the next three months, given the headway that mio TV has been making with content. Grp has declared an interim cash dividend of 5c per share, the same as last yr.. CIMB maintains O/p with $4.35 TP Deutsche maintains Hold with $3.41 TP HSBC maintains Neutral with $3.88 TP