With the release of the 2026 third-quarter report by China United Network Communications Limited, the Q3 reports of all three major telecom operators have now been fully disclosed. Overall, affected by factors such as the shift between old and new growth drivers, changes in the market environment, and adjustments to value-added tax item policies, the performance of all three major telecom operators has fluctuated. However, with the continued implementation of new businesses by the three major telecom operators, new growth drivers are also steadily accumulating. Wang Xing, chief analyst of the communications industry at Huatai Securities, told reporters that the adjustment to the scope of application of value-added tax items is the main policy factor behind the pressure on the performance of the three major telecom operators in this round. As the impact of this adjustment is gradually absorbed, the fundamentals of the three companies are expected to return to a steady growth trajectory in 2027. In the future, computing power services and intelligent services will become the core engines driving revenue growth for the three major telecom operators.
In terms of cash flow, the ability to generate cash improved year on year. Specifically, in the first three quarters of this year, China Mobile Limited (00941) achieved operating revenue of 780.3 billion yuan, down 1.8% year on year, and net profit attributable to shareholders of the parent company of 106.2 billion yuan, down 7.9% year on year. China Telecom Corporation Limited (00728) achieved operating revenue of 380.1 billion yuan in the first three quarters, down 3.59% year on year, and net profit attributable to shareholders of the listed company of 26.2 billion yuan, down 14.84% year on year. China Unicom (00762) achieved operating revenue of 294.647 billion yuan in the first three quarters, up 0.6% year on year, and net profit attributable to shareholders of the listed company of 5.803 billion yuan, down 33.8% year on year. Despite the fluctuations in performance, the cash-generating capacity of the three major telecom operators has not weakened in tandem. According to the announcements, in the first three quarters of this year, the net cash flows from operating activities of all three companies achieved varying degrees of year-on-year growth. In the first three quarters of this year, China Mobile's net cash flow from operating activities was 185.3 billion yuan, up 15.1% year on year; China Telecom's net cash flow from operating activities in the first three quarters was 97.717 billion yuan, up 11.92% year on year; and China Unicom's net cash flow from operating activities in the first three quarters was 59.686 billion yuan, up 2.3% year on year.
Meanwhile, the revenue structure of the three major telecom operators has continued to adjust. According to the announcement disclosed by China Mobile, in the first three quarters, China Mobile made every effort to strengthen, improve, and expand communications services, computing power services, and intelligent services, and its overall operating performance was stable. China Telecom achieved 46.2 billion yuan in intelligent revenue in the first three quarters, including artificial intelligence and intelligent computing services provided to customers. China Unicom's computing power revenue rose 12.2% year on year in the first three quarters, of which intelligent computing center revenue grew 10.4% year on year. A shift in revenue sources is becoming a common keyword in the financial reports of the three major telecom operators, but the paths to achieving transformation are beginning to differ. China Mobile is stabilizing its foundation with its scale advantage. As of the end of the third quarter of this year, China Mobile's total number of mobile customers reached 1.014 billion, a net increase of 8.89 million in the first three quarters, while the scale of 5G network customers rose to 702 million. According to the announcement, China Mobile will continue to accelerate its upgrade from a communications operator to a technology service enterprise, advance the integrated layout of communications networks, computing power networks, and intelligent networks, strengthen integrated innovation in communications, computing power, and intelligent services, reinforce its positioning in intelligent layout, accelerate expansion in the computing power market, consolidate the foundation of communications services, make every effort to improve quality and efficiency, continuously enhance core competitiveness, and build a world-class technology service enterprise at a high level. China Telecom, meanwhile, is building a growth logic centered on token operations. According to the announcement, China Telecom is accelerating its efforts to become a leading AI service provider, building a next-generation communications network and computing power network with a moderately advanced approach, continuously upgrading the Xingchen TokenHub platform, achieving rapid growth in daily token calls, promoting the accelerated implementation of "intelligent cloud cities," launching the Xingchen super intelligent agent TeleAgent, accelerating the popularization of AI applications, continuously expanding user scale, and constantly creating new growth poles for enterprise transformation and development. China Unicom, for its part, is focusing on the four core tracks of "connectivity," "computing power," "services," and "security," accelerating the pace of innovation and transformation, and realizing its transformation from a "traditional pipeline provider" to a "digital intelligence integrated service provider." According to the announcement, in the first three quarters of this year, China Unicom enhanced its full-chain capabilities in token creation, storage, transfer, cleansing, and application, acted as an operator of high-value tokens, and accelerated the large-scale implementation of AI; it iterated products agilely, deepened the "drag-and-drop" model, opened capability components that are ready for immediate use, and improved delivery quality and efficiency; and it used multiple forms such as "set meals," "ordering," and "buffets" to break through homogeneous competition with differentiated products.
"The monetization methods of telecom operators are shifting, and the token packages successively launched by the three major telecom operators are a direct reflection of this shift," Wang Xing told reporters. Token packages are billed by token, directly selling AI model calls and computing power consumption as commodities, which means that the value of computing power and intelligence is expected to become an important source of operator revenue. Wang Xing said that in the future, as telecom operators further connect AI application scenarios on both the enterprise user side and the individual user side, intelligent computing power resources are expected to achieve full rental, further improving asset turnover efficiency. In addition to the direct revenue brought by tokens, the token business is also expected to spill over and drive growth in general computing business. Taking text-based applications as an example, it can increase CDN traffic by four to six times; as multimodal model applications are gradually promoted, traffic demand is expected to grow further at a high speed. In this process, each telecom operator has its own focus in the specific path of AI monetization, and increasingly full market competition is placing higher demands on operators' AI product capabilities and service capabilities.
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