ISLAMABAD: Jazz has maintained its market leadership position by focusing on digital inclusion and investing Rs 3.7 billion in first quarter of 2023 for its ‘4G for all’ initiative in Pakistan.
This brought its total investment in Pakistan to USD 10.4 billion. Despite a 16% year-on-year growth in local currency, Jazz’s revenue declined 20.4% in USD terms in Q1 2023 due to a 47% YoY devaluation of Rs.
Moreover, the company’s margins were impacted by significant increases in business costs, such as an 8.3 p.p. YoY increase in interest rates, and around 80% and 32% YoY increases in fuel and electricity costs, respectively.
Jazz continued to prioritize the quality of its service by investing in more than 1,000 new 4G sites during the past year, leading to a 17.4% YoY increase in 4G customers, reaching 43.1 million, and an overall subscriber base of 73.7 million.
Jazz’s CEO, Aamir Ibrahim, emphasized the need for urgent policy interventions to address the telecom industry’s financial health issues. He proposed measures such as delinking the spectrum price from the US dollar, staggering license payments over ten annual installments instead of five, and implementing a regulatory approach to encourage disciplined inflationary pricing.
Jazz’s digital services continued to perform well, with JazzCash reaching 14.6 million monthly active users and recording 2 billion transactions in the last twelve months, with a Gross Transaction Value of Rs 4.5 trillion.
Meanwhile, the company’s self-care app, Jazz World, and entertainment platform, Tamasha, also enjoyed strong customer adoption levels and significant growth. Jazz’s customer-centric approach and sustained investments throughout its value chain have led to a consistent revenue market share growth of around 1% per year over the past 5 years.
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