Robi's Profit Grows 19 Percent as Grameenphone Keeps Slipping, Bangladesh's Telecom Rivals Diverge

Key takeaways

• Robi's profit grew 19 percent and revenue grew about 7 percent in the first nine months of 2026, even as its profit margin stayed near 9 percent.
• Grameenphone's revenue fell 1.6 percent and profit fell 4 percent over the same period, though its margin, at 18 percent, is still roughly double Robi's.
• Seventy two percent of Robi's active customers now use 4G, a sign of where both operators' growth has to come from next.
• GP's own finance chief says the third quarter already looked better than the first half, with subscriber and usage gains starting to show up in revenue.

Bangladesh's two biggest mobile operators posted nine month results this week that moved in opposite directions. Robi Axiata's revenue rose about 7 percent and its profit jumped 19 percent between January and September 2026, while market leader Grameenphone saw revenue slip 1.6 percent and profit fall 4 percent over the same stretch. It is the clearest sign yet that the smaller operator is closing the gap, even if it has not closed it by much.

Two Operators, Two Directions

Robi's chief executive, Ziad Shatara, framed the nine month numbers as proof of "the resilience of its business fundamentals" in a market that has not been easy for telecom operators this year. He pointed to the company's 4G base, now 72 percent of active customers, as the main lever behind the growth, along with continued investment in network quality and digital services.

Grameenphone's numbers tell a different story, but not an entirely bad one once you look past the headline. Revenue and profit were both down for the nine month period, continuing a stretch that has pulled GP's full year profit to an eight year low in 2025. But GP's chief financial officer, Otto Risbakk, pointed out that the pattern within the year has been improving. "The positive trends we saw in subscribers and usage are now translating into revenue," he said of the third quarter specifically, adding that the company's focus for the final quarter is "to monetise this momentum and drive further growth."

Margins Tell the Real Story

Growth rates alone make Robi look like the stronger business, but profitability still favours Grameenphone by a wide margin. GP earns about Tk18 in profit for every Tk100 of revenue, while Robi earns roughly Tk9, about half the rate. That gap has been narrowing for years as GP's scale advantages erode and Robi invests to catch up, but it has not closed. A company can grow its topline quickly and still be the less profitable business, and that is exactly the position Robi is in relative to Grameenphone right now.

The two companies have swapped positions on this scoreboard before. Grameenphone's own full year 2025 profit, at Tk29.6 billion, was its lowest in eight years, even as the company kept its dividend payout well above 200 percent of face value. Robi, by contrast, posted a record annual profit in 2024 and has kept building on it since, helped by a far smaller foreign exchange hit this year than in previous years when the taka's depreciation against the dollar cut deeper into telecom operators' import heavy cost bases.

What's Driving the Gap

Three forces explain most of the divergence. First, currency: Robi's nine month results show its foreign exchange losses shrinking sharply compared with the same period last year, as the taka has traded more calmly against major currencies in 2026 than it did during the worst of the post 2022 devaluation. Second, cost discipline: Robi has cut selling and distribution spending meaningfully even as revenue grew, a combination that flows straight through to the bottom line. Third, subscriber mix: both operators are chasing the same pool of 4G and data hungry customers, but Robi's smaller base gives it more room to grow its data penetration percentage quickly, while Grameenphone, already the market leader, has less room left to expand and is instead focused on monetising the customers it already has.

What It Means for Investors and Subscribers

For shareholders, the nine month numbers argue for watching Grameenphone's fourth quarter closely. If Risbakk's "momentum" claim holds and GP's revenue keeps recovering the way it did in the third quarter, the full year picture could look considerably better than the first half suggested. For Robi, the challenge is proving that 19 percent profit growth is repeatable once the currency tailwind fades, rather than a one off benefit from a calmer year for the taka.

For ordinary subscribers, the competitive pressure between the two operators has so far shown up more in network investment and data packages than in headline tariffs. With Robi pushing further into 4G and GP trying to convert its larger existing base into more revenue per user, Bangladeshi mobile users are likely to see both operators competing harder on data bundles and 4G coverage over the next few quarters than on voice pricing, which has been largely static for years.