Gelonghui, April 22 | Bank of China International published a research report showing that China Unicom's profit for the first quarter increased by 8.9% year-on-year and service revenue by 4.8% year-on-year, reflecting a healthy rebound in the mainland telecommunications industry in March and healthy competition in the service market. The bank believes that the next wave of mobile data traffic growth is likely to be driven by the popularity of artificial intelligence applications in mobile phones, and telecom operators will benefit from data traffic and customized “computing power.” The bank maintained the target price of HK$7.47 and reaffirmed the “buy” rating. According to Bank of China International, Unicom's telecommunications service revenue for the first quarter increased 4.8% year-on-year to 78.6 billion yuan, higher than the 4.3% year-on-year increase in national telecom service revenue for January and February announced by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of the Mainland, reflecting a healthy rebound in commercial activity in March after the long Lunar New Year holidays. Net profit increased 8.9% year-on-year to 5.6 billion yuan. The EBITDA profit margin was the same as the same period last year at 29.9%, and EBITDA increased 3.4% year-on-year, indicating that the EBITDA profit margin generated by emerging businesses is similar to that of traditional telecommunications businesses, just as the bank expects its traditional telecommunications business to record slow growth.