China Telecom's (0728) net profit dropped 14.9 percent year-on-year to 19.59 billion yuan (HK$22.86 billion) for the first six months of 2026.
It declared an interim dividend of 16.06 fen, down 11.4 percent over the same period last year.
Operating revenue inched down 4 percent to 260.5 billion yuan, partly weighted down by a 6.6 percent decline in industrial digitalisation service revenues that amounted to 69.9 billion yuan.
Revenue from principal businesses amounted to 244.1 billion yuan. Among them, income from the communications business totaled 213 billion yuan, while that of the intelligence business reached 31.1 billion yuan, representing an increase of 7.1 percent.
Its China Telecom Cloud business generated 61.8 billion yuan, up 7.8 percent from a year ago.
The telecom giant noted that the number of its integrated subscribers exceeded 130 million and the blended average revenue per user reached 128 yuan.
With Token operations as the main thread, the company said it will promote the development of new forms of the intelligent economy, continue to dedicate itself to delivering original and leading scitech innovations, continuously strengthen its inherent artificial intelligence security capabilities, and accelerate the construction of new digital information infrastructure.
