CHINA UNICOM delivered a stable revenue performance for 2025, with free cash flow surging 28.5% year-on-year. The full-year dividend payout ratio was raised to 61.3%. The AI business emerged as the strongest growth driver, with revenue increasing over 140%. Against a backdrop of overall capital expenditure contraction, investment in computing power accounted for more than 35% of the total, signaling an accelerated bet on AI infrastructure. CHINA UNICOM presented its final report card for the 14th Five-Year Plan period, showcasing stable revenue, significantly improved cash flow, and artificial intelligence as the most prominent growth pole.
The company released its full-year 2025 results on Thursday. Operating revenue increased 0.7% year-on-year to 392.2 billion yuan, while pre-tax profit saw a slight increase of 0.8% to 25.5 billion yuan. Free cash flow jumped 28.5% year-on-year to 36 billion yuan, marking the most significant cash improvement in recent years and highlighting sustained operational efficiency gains alongside controlled capital expenditure.
Regarding shareholder returns, the board recommended a final dividend of 0.1329 yuan per share (including tax). Combined with the interim dividend already paid, the total annual dividend amounts to 0.417 yuan per share, an increase of 3.1% year-on-year, with the payout ratio rising to 61.3%. The company also disclosed that capital expenditure for 2026 is estimated to be approximately 50 billion yuan, with computing power investment exceeding 35%, reflecting an accelerated transition towards AI infrastructure.
AI revenue grew over 140% year-on-year, establishing computing power as the core growth engine. In the performance report, AI-related business was the standout segment for growth. The company disclosed that AI revenue surged more than 140% year-on-year. Revenue from computing power business accounted for over 15% of service revenue, an increase of 1.1 percentage points from the previous year. Data center revenue reached 28.1 billion yuan, up 8.5% year-on-year.
In terms of infrastructure construction, the company's standard rack scale exceeded 1.1 million units, and intelligent computing scale reached 45 EFLOPS. Seven 100-megawatt-level AIDC parks have been completed. Focusing on AI applications, the company launched the Yuanjing MaaS platform, Yuanjing Wanwu Agent platform, and Yuanjing Wanxiang Data Engineering platform. It has accumulated over 400TB of high-quality datasets, provides more than 140 mainstream models, and has attracted over ten thousand developers.
For CHINA UNICOM Cloud, the company accelerated its evolution towards AI cloud, with revenue growing 5.2% year-on-year. It supports the construction of over 180 provincial and municipal government cloud platforms and empowers the digital and intelligent transformation of nearly 400,000 enterprise customers.
Free cash flow reached a multi-year high, with computing power investment exceeding 35%. The 28.5% year-on-year increase in free cash flow to 36 billion yuan was one of the core highlights of these results. This improvement was primarily due to effective capital expenditure control: full-year 2025 capital expenditure was 54.15 billion yuan, with the capital expenditure to service revenue ratio declining to 16%. Concurrently, by deepening co-construction and sharing and building a simplified network, the company achieved annualized operating expense savings of 1.35 billion yuan. Depreciation and amortization decreased 3.1% year-on-year to 80.83 billion yuan, partly benefiting from an adjustment to the depreciation period of 4G wireless equipment.
Looking ahead to 2026, the company expects capital expenditure of approximately 50 billion yuan, a further contraction from 2025, with computing power investment accounting for over 35%. This implies that traditional network infrastructure investment will increasingly give way to intelligent computing.
Connectivity business maintained its role as a stabilizer, with user base exceeding 1.2 billion. The connectivity business continued to form the foundation of the company's revenue and profit. As of the end of 2025, the total number of users surpassed 1.2 billion, an increase of 110 million from the previous year. Specifically, mobile billing subscribers exceeded 357 million, with a net addition of 13.32 million. Broadband subscribers exceeded 129 million, with a net addition of 7.61 million. In integrated services, the integrated service penetration rate rose to 78.3%, with the ARPU of integrated packages remaining above 100 yuan. The number of IoT connections reached 720 million, with nearly 98.33 million new additions. 5G private network revenue was 12.3 billion yuan, an increase of over 50% year-on-year. 5G-Advanced base stations were deployed in over 330 cities, and 10-gigabit optical networks underwent pilot commercial use in over 100 cities.
For international business, revenue was 13.6 billion yuan, up over 9% year-on-year, with benchmark projects launched such as smart manufacturing in ASEAN, intelligent warehousing in the Middle East, and smart mines in Africa.
Profit structure remained robust, with tax rate decline supporting net profit growth. Profit attributable to equity holders was 20.82 billion yuan, an increase of 1.0% year-on-year. Basic earnings per share were 0.68 yuan. EBITDA was 99.42 billion yuan, with the EBITDA to service revenue ratio at 28.6%. Operating profit grew 16.0% year-on-year to 18.59 billion yuan, significantly outpacing revenue growth, mainly benefiting from reduced depreciation and expense control. The effective tax rate was 17.8%, with some subsidiaries enjoying a preferential tax rate of 15%.
Regarding the balance sheet, as of December 31, 2025, the debt-to-asset ratio was 44.6%, down 1.2 percentage points from the end of the previous year. Interest-bearing borrowings stood at only 5.48 billion yuan, with a net debt to capital ratio as low as 2.2%, indicating a stable financial structure.
VAT category adjustment poses an uncertainty factor for 2026. The company disclosed a potential impact in its results announcement: according to a notice issued by the Ministry of Finance and the State Taxation Administration in January 2026, starting January 1, 2026, the VAT rate for mobile data services, SMS/MMS, and internet broadband access services will increase from 6% to 9%, with the applicable tax category changing from value-added telecom services to basic telecom services. The company stated that this tax category adjustment will impact revenue and profit, but the announcement did not disclose specific quantitative effects. This policy change will be a key variable for investors to monitor when assessing CHINA UNICOM's 2026 performance outlook.
The company's Annual General Meeting is scheduled for May 26, 2026, with the final dividend expected to be paid on June 24, 2026.