Q.1. How was the Company's operating performance in 2024?
In 2024, the Company's operating revenues amounted to RMB529.4 billion, representing an increase of 3.1% year-on-year. Of which, service revenues amounted to RMB482.0 billion, representing an increase of 3.7% year-on-year. EBITDA amounted to RMB140.8 billion, representing an increase of 2.9% year-on-year. Net profit amounted to RMB33.0 billion, representing an increase of 8.4% year-on-year, and the basic earnings per share were RMB0.36. Free cash flow reached RMB22.2 billion, representing an increase of 70.7% year-on-year.
Q2 How was the Company's mobile service performance and 5G commercialisation?
For individual and home customers, the Company continued to strengthen integrated development, constantly advancing the upgrade of integrating elements such as connectivity, terminals, applications and privileges. The Company accelerated the upgrade of mobile networks to 5G-A and household broadband to Gigabit and FTTR. Under the "Beautiful Home" brand, the Company continued to develop Smart Family applications to cater for different scenarios in "One All-fibre Network, One Intelligent Cloud and One Beautiful Home". The Company stepped up the integration of CHBG scenarios and continued to differentiate by cultivating integration as its leading advantage, marked by a steady growth in integrated customer base in 2024.
The Company continued to strengthen value management, deepened and refined the accurate retention and application enrichment of existing customers, and actively explored the use of AI large models and other digitalised tools to enhance insights into customer demands. The Company developed new scenarios and new demands in digital consumption, and continued to satisfy customers' personalised needs for security, health, entertainment, low-carbon and intelligence, thereby consistently enhancing its value to customers. Mobile and broadband ARPU remained stable in 2024.
In 2024, the Company's mobile communications service revenues reached RMB202.5 billion, representing an increase of 3.5% year-on-year. Of which, revenue from mobile value-added and applications increased by 16.1% year-on-year, bringing the total number of mobile subscribers to 425 million, and mobile ARPU reached RMB45.6. Wireline and Smart Family service revenues reached RMB125.7 billion, representing an increase of 2.1% year-on-year. Of which, revenue from the Smart Family business increased by 16.8% year-on-year. The number of broadband subscribers reached 197 million, and the broadband blended ARPU reached RMB47.6.
Q3 How was the Company's Industrial Digitalisation performance?
For government and business customers, the Company was committed to building a new integrated service model of "computing power + platform + data + model + application". It accelerated the upgrade of industry digital platform capabilities, launching a comprehensive set of industry solutions for key areas such as smart cities, social livelihood, and emergency response and safety and empowering customers in a full range of industries through over 100 digital platforms. The Company advanced the upgrade of the 5G NICES Pro+ integrated product portfolio, developed ten "5G+AI" industrial integrated scenario solutions, and had developed 45,000 industry application projects in fields such as power, chemical and mining.
In 2024, the Company's Industrial Digitalisation business achieved sound development, with revenue reaching RMB146.6 billion, representing an increase of 5.5% year-on-year; the proportion of Industrial Digitalisation revenue increased to 30.4%, up by 0.5p.p. over the same period last year.
Q4 How was the Company's China Telecom Cloud performance?
China Telecom Cloud Advancing into a New Stage of Intelligent Cloud Development, with "AI+" and "Quantum+" Empowering Industrial Innovation. The revenue from China Telecom Cloud amounted to RMB113.9 billion, representing an increase of 17.1% year-on-year.
Q5 How was the Company's AI development?
The Company thoroughly implemented "AI+", completing the "1+1+1+M+N" overall layout for artificial intelligence. Adhering to the philosophy of independent innovation, opening up and cooperation, it developed the Xingchen multimodal general large model foundation. This foundation provided a comprehensive suite of capabilities covering semantics, speech and visual perception, and was open-source in multiple sizes. The Company launched the industry's first large model supporting free mixing of Chinese, English and 50 dialects, as well as a knowledge-based view of all things control deployment large models. It developed AI-native applications such as intelligent systems and industrial solutions, as well as over 10 standardised AI products including AI smartphones and AI cloud computers. The Company launched over 50 industrial large models, serving more than 10,000 industrial customers. It accelerated the implementation and promotion of industrial large models in areas such as grassroots governance, smart government customer service and tourism guidance, effectively helped customers to improve efficiency and reduce costs, and continued to empower the intelligent transformation of the economy and the society, ranking 6th in China's large model application market share with its AI. The Company thoroughly promoted the embedding and application of 13 internal large models in various processes in its corporate management and operations, such as customer service, network operations and office work, driving cost reduction and enhancement of quality and efficiency. The Company established the Xinghai Big Data brand and ranked first for the year among data element service providers. Its data element platform expanded from Hainan to 7 provinces and 29 cities nationwide, while it also undertook the construction of 3 national-level data annotation bases. In the meantime, its data intelligence core platform served over 150 customers and built a large model training dataset comprising over 9 trillion Tokens.
Q6 What is the dividend policy of the Company?
The Company attaches great importance to shareholder returns. It continuously promotes the synchronised growth of market value and corporate value and strives to enhance its profitability and cash flow generation capabilities. Taking the Company's profitability into full consideration, alongside cash flow levels and capital needs for its future development, the Board of Directors has decided to recommend at the Annual General Meeting that the profit to be distributed in cash for the year 2024 shall represent 72% of the profit attributable to equity holders of the Company for the year. A final dividend of RMB0.0927 per share (pre-tax) will be declared for year 2024. Together with the 2024 interim dividend of RMB0.1671 per share (pre-tax), which has been already distributed, the full year dividend of 2024 amounts to RMB0.2598 per share (pre-tax), and the aggregate amount of the full year dividend increased by 11.4% year-on-year.
Within three years from 2024, the profit distributed in cash by the Company will gradually increase to above 75% of the profit attributable to equity holders of the Company for the year, continuously creating more value for shareholders.
Q7 What is the Company's CAPEX plan?
In 2024, the Company's capital expenditure was RMB93.5 billion, representing a decrease of 5.4% year-on-year.
Q8 How was the Company's cloud-network capabilities deployment and network upgrade?
The Company fully leveraged the advantages of cloud-network integration, adhered to the principle of network as the foundation, cloud as the core and security as the guarantee, seizing the direction of artificial intelligence development, expediting the enhancement and upgrade of new digital information infrastructure and empowering the development of AI.
Network for AI, the Company appropriately advanced the deployment of cloud-network infrastructure for AI, establishing two all-liquid-cooling pools with ten-thousand GPUs in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei and Yangtze River Delta, and deploying computing power pools with a thousand GPUs in Guangdong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Mongolia and Guizhou, making the intelligent computing power resources reaching 35 EFLOPS. The Company promoted the comprehensive upgrade of data centres to AIDC, relying on large parks in key regions, provincial and municipal telecom facility rooms, and edge stations to meet various intelligent computing deployment needs such as training and inference, central and edge, cloud side and terminal side. The Company constructed a high-throughput, low-latency intelligent computing and interconnection network, sizeably deployed G.654E new optical fibre, and constructed a 400Gbps all-optical transmission network. The average latency between the eight major hubs has decreased by 7% and the new metropolitan network covered over 200 edge computing power pools, achieving millisecond-level access to computing. With 9.29 million 10G PON ports in the Gigabit fibre network, the residential coverage rate in cities and towns exceeded 95%, and the 50G PON network was also pilot deployed to support the ten-gigabit access needs of key communities, industrial parks, factories, and other areas.
AI for Network, the Company leveraged AI technology to enhance network value, actively explored network intelligent endogenesis, pilot deployed intelligent network elements in wireless networks, core networks, and metropolitan area networks, built real-time perception of business quality and application-level analysis capabilities, achieved intelligent identification and precise control of users and applications. The IoVT business leveraged its video aggregation advantages to innovate video data governance, create high-quality video datasets, and empower AI services across all scenarios, creating over a hundred "AI + IoVT" scenario applications such as Security Smart Eye and Kitchen Monitoring. The Company promoted the enhancement of cloud network operation capabilities through AI empowerment, embedding self-developed network large models into production processes. The automatic activation rate of key emerging products significantly increased to 99%, and the efficiency of handling network breakdown improved by 30%. Both the number of network fault work orders and processing time achieved a dual reduction, with the overall self-intelligence level of cloud network operations reaching L3.6.
At present, Network for AI and AI for Network have initially formed a positive cycle of mutual promotion between "infrastructure optimisation" and "intelligent computing capability feedback," which not only accelerates the implementation of AI but also further enhances network value.
Q9 How was the Company's work in areas of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG)?
The Company proactively implemented the green development principles, continuously advancing the "1248" green development model, with a year-on-year decrease of 19.2% in carbon emissions per unit of the total volume of telecommunications services. The Company promoted the green development of cloud-network infrastructure and the transformation of energy consumption structure. The renewable energy usage rate and green electricity scale are industry-leading, with a cumulative total of 28 national green datacentres accredited. The Company continuously promoted AI energy saving for base stations and facility rooms, with an annualised electricity-saving exceeding 1 billion kWh. The Company continuously enhanced its green product and service capabilities, promoted the expansion of key products such as ecological environment perception, green lighting, and environmental protection cloud, which supported the green transformation of the economy and society.
The Company successfully completed communications assurance tasks for multiple key events including the 75th Anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China and the launch of the Shenzhou-18 and Shenzhou-19 manned spaceships. The Company utilised Tiantong satellites and drones to efficiently assist flood fighting and disaster relief efforts during times of natural disasters such as the super typhoon "Yagi". The Company empowered rural revitalization with data and intelligence, and continuously bridging the digital divide between urban and rural areas. The Company remained committed to social welfare initiatives, benefiting the public by integrating services into 90,000 urban and rural business halls, with an annual service scale exceeding 18 million people, and was awarded the "Significant Contribution Units of Dual 15 Project of Labour Union" by All-China Federation of Trade Unions. The Company protected the rights and interests of its employees in accordance with the law, created a comprehensive system for employee care, and continued to enhance its institutional guarantees. The Company also facilitated professional development paths for employees, fostering the mutual growth of employees and the Company.
Insisting on high-standard corporate governance, the Company fulfilled its obligations of information disclosure in compliance with laws and regulations and increased the level of corporate transparency. The Company continued to improve its corporate compliance management system, maintained compliance and efficient operation of its Shareholders Meeting, Board of Directors and Supervisory Committee and continued to optimise the internal control process. The Company maintained steady and compliant operations and effectively safeguarded the best and long-term interests of its shareholders. The Company proactively strengthened investor relations management by actively organising and participating in various investor relations activities such as results announcement briefings and investor communication meetings. The Company widely invited investors, industry analysts, media, and others to visit the Company and gain a deeper understanding, fully showcasing the Company's investment value and continuously enhancing market recognition.
Q10 What are the Company's priorities in the future?
Facing the future, the Company will actively grasp the direction of the industry and artificial intelligence development. It will continue to deeply implement its Cloudification and Digital Transformation strategy, and strive to build a service-oriented, technology-oriented, and secured enterprise. It will place greater emphasis on the theme of high-quality development, while harnessing driving forces from reforms and opening up, with strengthening the enterprise with talents as the key. The Company will continue to promote the deep integration of sci-tech innovation and industrial innovation, facilitating the smooth transition between new and old development momentum. It will further strengthen the supply of high-quality, efficient digitalised and intelligent products and services, thereby boosting consumption and meeting the new demands of thousands of industries and households for a better digital life. Promoting the empowerment of economy and society with artificial intelligence applications, the Company continuously enhancing its core functions and core competitiveness. Accelerating the building of a world-class enterprise, the Company will proactively bring returns to shareholders and strive to write a new chapter in Chinese-style modernised telecommunications.
updated 13th May, 2025
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