China's No. 2 mobile phone company says profits fall on unusual expense

China Unicom Ltd., China's second-largest mobile phone company, said Friday its profits for the first nine months of the year were down 7.4 percent from the same period last year after an unusual 4.55 billion yuan (US$560 million; Ђ450 million) expense.

The company said its net profit for January-September totaled 3.8 billion yuan (US$470 million; Ђ380 million), down from 4.1 billion yuan (US$505 million; Ђ400 million) during the same period last year.

It blamed the fall on an amortization expense for subsidizing handsets for its code division multiple access service.

It said total revenues rose nearly 11 percent to 65.3 billion yuan (US$8 billion; Ђ6.5 billion).

Unicom said it had 124 million subscribers as of the end of September, AP reported. V.A.