Grameenphone's Nine Month Profit Slips 4 Percent to Tk2,171 Crore as Revenue Pressure Persists

Grameenphone's profit barely moved this quarter, and for a company that has spent the past two years watching its earnings slide, barely moving counts as a small relief. Financial statements published on October 26 show the telecom operator earned Tk750 crore in net profit in the July to September quarter, down just one crore taka from Tk751 crore a year earlier, a rounding error by the standards of a business this size. Nine month profit for January to September 2026 came in at Tk2,171 crore, down 4 percent from the same period last year, with earnings per share slipping to Tk16.08 from Tk16.77.

• Grameenphone's Q3 2026 net profit was Tk750 crore, almost flat against Tk751 crore a year earlier.
• Nine month profit for 2026 fell 4 percent year on year to Tk2,171 crore, with EPS down to Tk16.08.
• The flat quarter follows two straight quarters of sharper declines, Q1 profit of roughly Tk661 crore and a 14 percent drop in Q2.
• The company closed June with 86.3 million subscribers, of whom 52.7 million were active internet users.

A Rough Two Years, Now Levelling Off

To see why a one crore taka dip counts as good news, it helps to look at where Grameenphone has come from. Full year profit for 2025 fell to Tk2,960 crore, the lowest in eight years, a decline the company attributed to spectrum costs, network expansion spending, currency depreciation and higher tax costs. That pressure continued into 2026: second quarter revenue fell 3 percent year on year to Tk3,980 crore and profit dropped nearly 14 percent to Tk760 crore, with earnings per share down to Tk5.62 from Tk6.51. Grameenphone's own chief financial officer, Otto Risbakk, pointed to a base effect behind part of that decline, the equivalent quarter in 2025 had benefited from the timing of two Eid festivals falling close together, temporarily inflating usage and revenue. Against that backdrop, a third quarter that essentially matched last year's result looks less like stagnation and more like the earnings base finally catching up with a harder comparison period.

Where the Pressure Is Coming From

Grameenphone's management has repeatedly pointed to the same set of headwinds. Inflation running around 9 percent has squeezed household spending on everything including mobile data and airtime top ups. The company has also been pouring capital into expanding its 700 MHz spectrum deployment, which by mid year covered more than 1,000 sites, an investment that raises costs well before it shows up as additional revenue. Chief executive Yasir Azman has framed the response as one of discipline rather than retreat, maintaining an EBITDA margin around 58 percent even as total costs crept up only 1.8 percent, which he described as evidence of "continued cost discipline and operational efficiency" despite the heavier capital spending. Risbakk, for his part, has pointed to subscriber growth and rising data usage as signs that the underlying business remains healthy, noting that Grameenphone stays debt free with strong cash flow even through the earnings slowdown.

Grameenphone CFO Otto Risbakk said subscriber growth and higher data usage point to improving fundamentals, adding that the company "remained debt free with strong cash flows" through the period.

What a Flat Quarter Means for Dividends

Grameenphone has historically paid out close to the whole of its profit as dividends, and investors watching the DSE's largest telecom stock will be parsing this result mainly for what it signals about the next payout. The company paid an interim cash dividend of 105 percent after the first half of 2026, equal to the entirety of that period's profit, after full year 2025 dividends came in at 215 percent, down sharply from 330 percent in 2024. A nine month profit decline of only 4 percent, after a first half that fell a steeper 6 percent, suggests the pace of erosion is slowing rather than reversing, which matters for a stock whose appeal has always rested on dependable cash payouts rather than growth.

What It Means for You

For Grameenphone subscribers, this result changes little in the near term, pricing and network investment decisions move on their own schedule regardless of one quarter's earnings print. For anyone holding Grameenphone shares through a DSE brokerage account, mutual fund or retirement portfolio, the more useful signal is that the steep earnings declines of the past two years appear to be bottoming out, even if a full recovery is not yet visible in the numbers. Investors comparing where else to put savings while the telecom sector works through this patch can check current fixed income alternatives using the FDR rate comparison tool.