Newly minted CEO at Maxis, Robert Nason gave his first financial report for the quarter ending 31st March and the results were just the good news investor were looking to hear from the successor. Despite the revenue being slightly lower compared to Q12017 with a decline of 4.6% or a reduction of RM140 million, Maxis showed higher profits for the quarter with RM523 million compared to RM503 million in the same quarter in 2017.

The telco attributes the revenue decline to soft prepaid market that saw it lose over 15.5% in revenue dropping to RM849 million, Maxis also had 211,000 subscribers migrate from this sector in the last three months. However, the numbers are more alarming for the 4 quarter accumulative from Q1 2017, with close to 1 million seeking alternative service providers. Price focused competition, SIM consolidation and postpaid migration were also some of the factors identified for the poor performance in prepaid. Addressing this erosion, Maxis has just offered new Hotlink “Red” plans with more data and at lower pricing.

Postpaid sector continues to pay dividends for the operator, adding another 5.2% to its revenue to RM985 million and increase in subscriber base to 2,912,000 from 2,853,000. MaxisOne base has also grown to over 2 million users giving the telco a steady income stream and higher data usage. Things are smooth sailing in postpaid so much so Maxis enjoys the highest ARPU in the industry with RM92 per user.

Nason will have his hands full keeping Maxis on track especially with the ongoing price war among the telco’s in the volatile prepaid market which is seeing intensive competition. But he will have the comfort of having the best 4G LTE network with 92% coverage in the country to rely on for his strategies.