China Unicom (0762)’s net profit for the first half of 2026 slumped 34.6 percent year on year to 9.5 billion yuan under short-term profitability pressure due to the value-added tax (VAT) and changes in the timing of employee benefit expense spending.
Its board did not declare an interim dividend, compared to the 0.2841 yuan of interim dividend distributed in the first half of 2025, according to the company’s exchange filing on Tuesday.
Its shares slipped 0.95 percent to HK$6.27 per share.
The company expects employee benefit expenses to remain stable, with profit contraction narrowing significantly, said China Unicom’s chairman and chief executive Dong Xin.
Against the backdrop of the overall sluggishness in the industry, the company said its revenue remained stable, rising 0.6 percent to 201.4 billion yuan. While service revenue declined slightly by 0.2 percent to 178 billion yuan.
Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization were 47.42 billion yuan, accounting for 26.6 percent of service revenue.
Operating costs rose 4.1 percent to 1.94 billion yuan, of which employee expenses rose 19.3 percent to 341 million yuan, accounting for 17 percent of operating costs, compared with 14.3 percent in the same period last year.
Notably, its computing revenue reached 41.9 billion yuan, up 13 percent. The value added by new users was higher than that of existing users, the integrated subscriber penetration exceeded 78 percent, and the ARPU of integrated packages remained above 100 yuan.
Starting this year, business activities in China involving the provision of mobile data services, short message service, multimedia message service, and Internet broadband access services through the use of fixed-line networks, mobile networks, satellites, and the internet, with the corresponding VAT rate adjusted from 6 percent to 9 percent.
Under its institutional reform, the number of management departments at the headquarters has been reduced by nearly 40 percent, as the company aims to clear bottlenecks, streamline hierarchies, improve efficiency, and further unleash development vitality.
