HONG KONG (Reuters) - China Telecom Corp Ltd on Tuesday reported a 13.9 rise in 2018 net profit, beating estimates, helped by growing data traffic and cloud service demand in the country.
Full-year net profit came in at 21.21 billion yuan (2.38 billion pounds), compared with 18.617 billion yuan in the previous year.
Meanwhile, 16 analysts polled by Refinitiv had an average forecast of 20.5 billion yuan.
Net profit for the December-quarter stood at 2.18 billion yuan.
Total revenue for the full year rose 3 percent to 377 billion yuan, against the average estimate of 380.6 billion yuan by 21 analysts on Refinitiv.
The state-controlled telecom operator announced a final dividend of HK$0.125 per share, up from HK$0.115 a year ago.
(Reporting by Sijia Jiang, Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips)
