Analyst Note
| Dan Baker |China Telecom’s 2022 was highlighted by continued exceptional growth in cloud services revenue (which the company expects to continue in 2023) and a focus on industrial digitization. This drove 2022 services revenue growth of 8%, but with some margin contraction with EBITDA growing 3.4% and underlying earnings per share growing 3.8%. For traditional telecom services products, we estimate that 8% services revenue growth would likely drive over 20% earnings growth. The lower-margin industrial internet services are likely contributing to the lower consolidated margins. Fourth-quarter services revenue growth of 7.9% year on year was broadly in line with the full year, but industrial digitization grew 19% year on year in the fourth quarter with wireline and smart family growing 3.8% year on year and mobile service revenue declining 2.2% year on year.