China Mobile reportedly eyes HKBN buyout

China Mobile is reportedly mulling to acquire Hong Kong's telecoms company HKBN, which is currently valued at US$1 billion.

According to Reuters, China Mobile recently filed a request for proposal (RFP) to a small group of banks to advise on acquiring HKBN, which offers services including broadband and Wi-Fi management.

Currently, China Mobile is still receiving pitches from investment banks and needs more time to decide on making a formal offer, according to the report.

HKBN had a market value of HK$7.94 billion (US$1.01 billion) as of Tuesday morning's market close.

HKBN told MARKETING-INTERACTIVE it has no comment regarding the matter. MARKETING-INTERACTIVE has also reached out to China Mobile for a statement.

Back in March, China Mobile said in its annual results 2022 that its operating revenue for the year reached RMB937.3 billion, or 10.5% growth year-on-year. Of this, telecommunications services revenue accounted for RMB812.1 billion, an increase of 8.1% year-on-year.

According to the results, all CHBN markets saw growth in their customer base and revenue, with HBN revenue accounting for 39.8% of telecommunications services revenue, an increase of 4.1 percentage points year-on-year. Due to the rapid expansion of 5G applications, mobile cloud, digital content, smart home and other businesses, digital transformation revenue reached RMB207.6 billion, up 30.3% year-on-year.

Overall, its efforts in fostering digital transformation revenue as the “second curve” have yielded remarkable results. These services have become a key growth driver contributing to a more balanced, stable and healthy overall revenue structure. “We have acquired increasingly stronger sustainable growth and significantly improved resilience,” said the statement.

Meanwhile, profit attributable to equity shareholders was RMB125.5 billion, an increase of 8.0% year-on-year, and earnings per share were RMB5.88. Its profitability remained in a leading position among top-tier global telecommunications operators.

Yang Jie, chairman of the company commented, "Faced with both opportunities and challenges, we will fully, accurately and comprehensively align with new principles to ensure we contribute to the new development paradigm. We will proactively put our '1-2-2-5' strategy into practice, anchoring ourselves to the 'one position' of a world-class information services and sci-tech innovation enterprise, while speeding up the 'two changes', which are the shift from quantitative leadership based on scale to qualitative leadership focused on improving effectiveness and efficiency, and the shift from delivering business results in the short-to-mid-term to achieving value growth in the mid-to-long-term."

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