SK Telecom’s spending on 5G drops 24% in 2020

SK Telecom’s capital expenditure dropped a significant 24% in 2020.

The company spent 2.2 trillion won, down 24.3% from 2019’s 2.91 trillion won.

The carrier has up to now remained reticent on how much it would spend in 2020. At the first quarter conference call that year, CFO Yoon Poong-young had said it doesn’t expect increase in CAPEX on that year.

Yoon had said in the fourth quarter conference call that the company plans to spend a similar amount in 2021 to that of 2020.

LG Uplus and KT had said in 2020 they expected capital expenditure to drop 4.2% and 4.8%, respectively, from the previous year.

LG Uplus’ 2020 CAPEX came down to 2.38 trillion won, down 8.7% from the previous year. The company said this was 95.2% of its earlier guidance.

KT is yet to announce its earnings for the entire year of 2020 but is expected to have spent similarly less.

The telco spent 1.78 trillion won last year as of the third quarter. It is highly likely that it will also report a drop of around 20% in CAPEX for 2020.