Detailed explanation: How did China Mobile perform in 2020?

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Compared with China Telecom and China Unicom, which announced their 2020 full-year financial reports in early March, China Mobile, which announced its financial report at the end of March, also delivered a surprisingly good answer sheet. Compared with the confidence of China Telecom and China Unicom in releasing their financial reports first, China Mobile's performance is more solid. How did China Mobile perform in 2020? Now let's analyze it in detail with everyone.

1. The most dedicated 5G network builder

Public financial report data shows that China Mobile's capital expenditure in 2020 was 180.6 billion yuan, mainly invested in construction projects such as 5G boutique networks, cloud infrastructure, "3+3+X" data centers, and network intelligent transformation. Among them, the investment related to 5G network construction was 102.5 billion yuan, an increase of 2.5 billion yuan compared to the plan at the beginning of the year.

Guided by the new infrastructure strategy, China Mobile has continued to strengthen its 5G construction efforts. Data shows that by the end of 2020, China Mobile had built a total of 390,000 5G base stations, 90,000 more than at the beginning of the year. China Mobile ranks first in the number of built 5G base stations not only in China, but also in the world.

A careful comparison of the 5G capital expenditure plans of the three major operators shows that China Mobile is the only operator that increased its 5G capital expenditure in 2020. Both China Unicom and China Telecom have reduced their spending compared to the beginning of the year, with a reduction of more than 1 billion yuan, which is actually quite large.

Here we need to remind you of a very interesting phenomenon. China Mobile invested about 100 billion yuan and built 390,000 5G base stations; China Unicom and China Telecom jointly built and shared 73.2 billion yuan and built 380,000 5G base stations. What expenses did China Unicom and China Telecom save by jointly building and sharing?

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In addition, China Mobile is also ahead in the development of 5G users. Public data shows that by the end of 2020, China Mobile's 5G package users had exceeded 165 million, and the number of online 5G terminal users exceeded 110 million during the same period. Although the penetration rate is not as high as that of its competitors, the user scale and quality are the highest.

2. The most cost-effective broadband provider

Public financial report data show that China Mobile added more than 23 million new broadband users in 2020, and the total number of users has exceeded 210 million. It is the only operator with more than 200 million broadband users. It is also the operator that started the latest and has the most significant development achievements. Of course, it is also the broadband operator most favored by users.

Such brilliant achievements in the broadband sector cannot be achieved by gimmicks or fooling users. China Mobile relies on real cost-effectiveness. This can be judged from the continuous decline in broadband prices since 2013 and the fact that China Mobile's broadband exports are roughly in the first echelon of the industry.

In addition, please see the table below to see if China Mobile is real. China Mobile's broadband revenue in 2020 was 80.8 billion yuan, while China Unicom and China Telecom had 42.6 billion yuan and 71.9 billion yuan respectively. China Mobile had 210 million broadband users at the end of 2020, while China Unicom and China Telecom had 86 million and 159 million users respectively.

If these are not enough to illustrate the high cost-effectiveness of China Mobile's broadband, you can look at the following data: China Unicom's broadband user access ARPU is RMB 41.5 per household, China Telecom's is RMB 38.4 per household, and China Mobile's is RMB 34 per household.

Judging from the ARPU values ​​of broadband users announced by the three major operators, China Mobile's broadband user ARPU is still the lowest, which means that on the one hand, China Mobile has been working hard to improve the quality of broadband, and on the other hand, it has maintained a low price. Does this count as increasing the quantity without increasing the price?

3. Operators with the highest labor productivity

China Mobile's public 2020 financial report shows that labor costs in that year were 106.429 billion yuan, an increase of 3.8% from 2019, an increase of 3.9 billion yuan, accounting for 13.86% of operating income and 15.3% of main business income, which is lower than China Telecom and far lower than China Telecom.

China Mobile has a total of approximately 459,000 employees. Based on this, we estimate that China Mobile's average salary in 2020 is about 231,900 yuan, which is slightly higher than China Unicom's 230,200 yuan, but lower than China Telecom's 232,200 yuan. After years of catching up, China Mobile has finally caught up with China Telecom.

In terms of labor productivity, China Mobile has always been far ahead. China Mobile maintained its consistent strong performance in 2020. In this indicator, China Mobile's academic style is undoubtedly revealed. Although China Mobile's salary and benefits are basically the same as those of its competitors, China Mobile's employees' execution and work results are more significant.

In addition to the conventional indicators above, China Mobile's emerging market business has also made great progress, and the returns in the field of equity investment are particularly rich. Public data shows that in 2020, international business revenue reached RMB 11.1 billion, a year-on-year increase of 16.6%; in terms of equity investment, the contribution of equity investment income to net profit for the whole year reached 11.8%; in terms of digital content and financial technology, as of the end of December 2020, the monthly active users of "Migu Video" increased by 18.4% year-on-year, the number of users of "Video Ringtones" exceeded 140 million, the number of users of "Hecai Cloud" exceeded 100 million, and the monthly active users of "Hebao" increased by 39.1% year-on-year.

In the face of various achievements, although China Mobile is an undisputed all-round academic leader, while timely summarizing its development experience, China Mobile also needs to focus on improving its weak indicators, especially to continue to play an exemplary pioneering role in my country's bid to become a global leader in 5G.