News Alert: 5G sub net adds recovered in May 2022
- 5G sub net adds recovered in May 2022 after a decline in Apr 2022
- CM and CT’s current monthly run rate for FY22 exceeded our estimation, while CU’s is below
- CM slightly gained market share in 5G sub market
- Maintain BUY calls on CM, CT and CU
What’s New
– China Mobile (CM, 941 HK), China Telecom (CT, 728 HK), and China Unicom (CU, 762 HK) released the monthly operating data of May 2022 on 20 Jun 2022 after market close.
– 5G sub net adds was 18.2m (+75.7% m-o-m), 7.0m (+5.4%) and 4.9m (+20.1%) for CM, CT and CU respectively.
– CM’s total mobile sub slightly increased 0.2m to 966.6m and CT’s mobile sub increased by 0.78m to 381.2m.
– 5G penetration rate reached to 51.2% (+1.9ppts m-o-m) for CM and 58.9% (+1.7ppts m-o-m) for CT.
Our View:
– 5G net adds recovered in May 2022 after a slow-down Apr 2022 and we maintain our forecast of 180m, 80m, and 75m 5G sub net adds in FY22 for CM, CT, and CU respectively.
– Overall, the average 5G sub net adds in 5M22 for CM (21.7m) and CT (7.3m) exceeded the monthly run-rate of our estimation of 15m and 6.7m respectively, while CU’s average of 5.0m per month is lower than our estimated 6.3m.
– CM slightly gained market in the 5G sub market in May 2022.
– Maintain BUY call on CT, CM, and CU on stable outlook and undemanding valuation.