Thaicom squeezed by customer churn
August 11, 2020
By Chris Forrester
Thaicom has turned a Q1 net loss into a net profit for Q2, but revenues continue to suffer from the economic downturn.
The shift in fortunes was largely down to compensation income and offsetting losses from foreign exchange, the company said. Cutting out these exceptionals and Thaicom’s profit was just Baht 2 million (€0.05m).
The company’s net profit for Q2/2020 was Baht 498 million, significantly improved from the net loss of Baht 135 million for Q2/2019 and Baht 198 million for Q1/2020.
Thaicom reported revenue from sales and services for Q2/2020 of Baht 873 million, down by 28 per cent and 9.5 per cent from Q2/2019 and Q1/2020, respectively, mainly as a result of a decrease of customer demand for broadband satellite services, along with customer churn from the Thaicom 5 satellite deorbit.
The overall utilisation rate for Thaicom 6, Thaicom 7, and Thaicom 8 as at the end of Q2/2020 was 63 per cent, down from 65 per cent as at the end of Q1/2020. For broadband satellite, on Thaicom 4, the utilisation rate was 19 per cent, decreased from 21 per cent as at the end Q1/2020, mainly due to the drop of bandwidth consumption from overseas customers.