Ironically, many Asian companies owe their healthy balance sheets to the tough times of the late '90s, when most Asian telcos were too busy recovering from the crisis to contemplate costly infrastructure upgrades. Now the combination of low debt and brisk growth in demand is producing some strong results. All good news. Yet the Asia market has some flops as well. In Malaysia, the initial public offering of wireless operator Time dotCom, controlled by businessman Halim Saad, was an embarrassing flop.
Investors fear a slowdown in local economies and, in some countries, increased pressure on margins.
The number of mobile-phone subscribers more than doubled last year, to 85.5 million, and is set to reach 132 million by the end of 2001. Only one of six mobile providers, Hong Kong CSL Ltd., is profitable. And banks are reluctant to lend big bucks on 3G plans that may not pay off until a distant date. The core telecom operation will be lucky to achieve single-digit growth in the face of falling revenues from international services and heavy competition for wireless, data, and broadband. Investors feared SingTel was overpaying.