Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to China Mobile Limited's 2022 interim results briefing. To prevent the spread of COVID-19, we continue to communicate our results by way of telephone conference. We'd appreciate your understanding on this. In today's presentation, I'll first brief you on our overall results for the first half of 2022. Then Mr. Dong Xin, our Chief Executive Officer, will talk about our operating performance. Finally, Mr. Li Ronghua, our Chief Financial Officer , will brief you on our financial results. We saw notable results in our developments in the first half of 2022. First, we maintained a favorable trend in our operating performance and marked new milestones on our journey to achieve high-quality development. Second, we further promoted value-operated operations and achieved significant results. Our transformation business gained strong growth momentum.
Third, we accelerated the development of digital intelligent new infrastructure and continued to enhance science tech and innovation capabilities. Fourth, we extended enterprise reforms in greater breadth and depth and strengthened open cooperation to achieve mutual benefits. Fifth, we attached utmost importance to shareholders' returns and share the fruits of digital intelligence transformation. Sixth, we strive to tap into the enormous opportunities in the blue ocean digital economy and aspire to become a world-class enterprise. By way of reference, we provide the results of key performance indicators for the first half of 2022 in this table. In the first half of 2022, despite the headwinds and challenges posed by COVID-19, alongside other complexities in the external environment, we made every effort to seize opportunities arising from the full-fledged digital economy.
We did this by embedding ourselves in the aspiration to become a world-class information services and science tech innovation enterprise. We adopted a scientific approach to our reform and development, as well as COVID-19 prevention and control. Our business performance maintained a favorable growth trend, and we marked new milestones on the journey to achieve high-quality development. Operating revenue amounted to CNY 496.9 billion, up by 12% year-over-year. Net profit stood at CNY 70.3 billion, up by 18.9% year-over-year. Our profitability remained in the leading position among top-tier global telecommunications operators. Return on equity was 11.3%, maintaining our industry-leading position. We further promoted value-oriented operations and achieved significant results. The CHBN revenue grew across the board.
Contributions of CHBN revenue to service revenue reached 40%, capturing an increase of nearly nine percentage points in less than three years' time, ensuring a further optimized revenue structure. Our transformation business gained strong growth momentum. Benefiting from the rapid growth of digital content, smart home, 5G solutions for vertical industry sectors, Mobile Cloud, and other information service businesses, our digital transformation revenue reached CNY 110.8 billion, up by 39.2% year-on-year, accounting for 26% of service revenue. It has become a key revenue growth driver, showing a strong upward trajectory as we break new ground in the information services market as part of our new phase of our development.
We leaned on our differentiated advantages in the convergences of cloud and network, cloud and big data, cloud and intelligence, and cloud and edge computing to further optimize our industry-leading Mobile Cloud products and technology. We're fast becoming a top-tier player in the Mobile Cloud space. In the first half of 2022, Mobile Cloud revenue maintained very rapid growth and reached CNY 23.4 billion, up by 103.6% year-on-year. We continue to gain influence in the industry. For the customer and home markets, the number of monthly active customers of Mobile Cloud Drive exceeded 140 million and ranked second in the industry. Its revenue reached CNY 2.9 billion, up by 131% year-on-year. For the business market, our public cloud, dedicated cloud, and public administration cloud have seen rapid surges in industry rankings.
We have significantly increased our resources and capabilities. Our proprietary core products have proven to be secure and controllable, and we've achieved industry leadership in integrated cloud network edge computing capabilities. Our market expansion achieved significant progress. As of the end of June 2022, we've signed over 3,500 cloud services major contracts, generating revenue of over CNY 13 billion. We completed a number of model industry clouds for sectors including public administration, education, and healthcare. We systematically created a new information infrastructure centering around 5G, computing force network, and smart mid-end platform. In the first half of 2022, we spent an overall CapEx of CNY 92 billion. For 5G, we continue to expand the depth and breadth of 5G coverage while promoting 5G network construction and sharing with CBN. These efforts enabled us to consolidate our 5G leadership.
In the first half of 2022, 5G-related CapEx amounted to CNY 58.7 billion. We have commissioned a cumulative of 1 million 5G base stations, including 300,000 700 megahertz 5G base stations. For computing force network, we actively responded to the Eastern Data, Western Computing national strategy and transformed our CFNs from a conceptual prototype to an industrial practice. We strengthened our 4+3+X data centers facilities with a total of 429,000 IDC cabinets available for external use. We promoted the constructions of N+31+X mobile cloud infrastructure. The total number of cloud servers deployed has accumulated to 593,000.
For smart mid-end platform, we strove to build an open central kitchen-like model for our smart mid-end platform and have seen positive early outcomes in terms of our ability to apply the capabilities internally and externally, as well as the value delivered. At present, we've marketed 476 mid-end platform capabilities, which were deployed more than 11 billion x a month on average, up by 61.5% year-on-year. We have further improved the top-level designs of technological innovation and continuously increased R&D investment. As a result, we have effectively unleashed ability and vitality of innovation and continuously enhanced scientific innovation capabilities. We put a strong focus on addressing the company strategy and new driving forces of the market.
In the first half of 2022, our R&D investments amounted to CNY 8.2 billion, up by 20.3% year-on-year. We assumed the principal role in driving innovation and actively integrated into the national technological innovation system. We devoted ourselves to developing first-class original technologies and serving as a leader in the model industrial chain, and we achieved a number of breakthroughs. We are an industry leader in patent and standard setting with a total of 177 5G international standard setting projects and owning more than 11,000 authorized invention patents. These achievements allows us to sit in the group of top-tier global operators. We have rapidly enhanced our critical digital intelligence capabilities and achieved breakthroughs in various new technological innovation practices such as AI, IoT, cloud computing, blockchain, et cetera.
We continue to advance enterprise reforms in greater depth and breadth and strengthen open cooperation to achieve mutual benefits. For system reforms, we further optimize our corporate governance and market-oriented operation system and steadily promoted reforms to innovation and incentive mechanisms, effectively stimulating corporate vitality. We've seen breakthrough from mixed ownership reforms. At Xinyang Technology , we successfully introduced strategic investors and implemented an employee share ownership scheme. For organizational evolution, we established a pan-terminal and omni-channel direct sale system alongside our efforts to extend grid-based reforms. For our business market, we refined a system that supports go-to-market initiatives and continue to enhance operational efficiency.
For open cooperation and ecosystem construction, by using different approaches such as fostering strategic collaboration, capital cooperation, joint innovation, promoting partnership with members of the ecosystem, we put a focus on promoting the digital industry and digitalization of industries and took concrete steps to establish closer ties with our partners, optimize our investment strategy, instill new elements into our joint R&D model, and increase industry synergy. Drawing on our new information service system, which features connectivity, computing force, and abilities, we also redoubled our efforts to extensively expand the digital ecosystem.
To achieve higher returns for shareholders and share the fruits of our operating gains, after giving full consideration to our company profitability, cash flow condition, and future development needs, the company has decided to pay HKD 2.2 per share for the 2022 interim dividend, representing an increase of 34.9% year-on-year. The dividend payout ratio for 2022 full year will further increase from that of the previous year. In 2023, it will increase to 70% or above of the profit attributable to equity shareholders of the company for that year. At present, the fast-growing, all-encompassing, and profoundly impactful digital economy features an information network and its critical infrastructure, data as its core element, information technology as the major driver, and integration into innovation as its key strategic elements.
In the digital economy, information has become a crucial factor that drives the progress of human civilization, as well as economic and social development. The development will create enormous growth opportunities for information services. China's digital economy is expected to grow from 39.8% of its GDP in 2021 to over 50% by 2025, with the scale of information services market expected to increase from CNY 12.5 trillion in 2021 to CNY 22.8 trillion over the same period. The growth trend presents valuable opportunities for the digital intelligence transformation of the company. In response to the evolving industry landscape as well as opportunities emerging from it, we will systematically create a new information infrastructure centering on 5G, computing force network, and smart mid-end platform. Innovatively build a new information service system that consists of connectivity, computing force, and abilities.
With this, we continue to satisfy, drive, and uncover market demand while enabling the digital intelligence transformations of production, lifestyle, and social governance, and redoubling our efforts to undergo the two advancements and two integrations. We strive to consistently create greater value for our customers and shareholders by providing quality information services and generating exceptional business results. That basically concludes my part of the presentation. Now, let me turn it over to Mr. Dong Xin for operating performance. Thank you, Mr. Yang. I'm delighted to present our operating performance in the first half of 2022. In the first half of 2022, our CHBN markets grew across the board. By way of reference, we have shown in this table the revenue data of CHBN markets.
For the customer markets, we promoted the integrated management of data assets, applications, and customer benefits at greater depth, and enhanced the coordinated development between the customer market andC HBN markets. As of the end of June 2022, our mobile customer base reached 970 million, of which 5G network customers reached 263 million. Mobile ARPU amounted to CNY 52.3, up by 0.2%. Revenue from customer markets increased by 0.2% to CNY 256.1 billion. In terms of customer benefits, we achieved dual uplifts in both customer scale and income. Our benefits boast a customer base of 241 million and generate income of CNY 8.33 billion, up by 119.6%.
For the home market, thanks to our efforts to leverage combined strength of our full gigabyte network connections and cloud-based applications, we saw favorable growth in both customer scale and revenue for this business line. Revenue from the home market increased by 18.7% to CNY 59.4 billion. Household customer blended ARPU increased by 4.6% - CNY 43. Household broadband customers reached 230 million, of which 181 million were mobile hub users. We have 26.6 million gigabyte broadband customers with all our optical line terminal, OLT platforms in the urban areas of cities and counties, and over 88% of those in townships and villages equipped with gigabyte capacity. We have expanded the scale of key smart home products with a total of 1,667 HD DICT leading showcases.
For the business market, we advanced the integrated development of our network, cloud, and DICT, and comprehensively fostered a competitiveness in information service industry. Revenue from business market amounted to CNY 91.1 billion, up by 24.6%. We have mass-replicated 5G vertical industry applications across a wide range of industries such as smart factories and signed agreements of a cumulative over 11,000 5G commercial projects across multiple sectors. Industry cloud continued to deliver very rapid growth, with more than 1.2 million customers and revenue increasing by 93.9% to CNY 18.9 billion. We regarded the ToV and ToG markets independent competitive fields. We have accumulated more than 195 million Internet of Vehicles connections and provided public administration informatization solutions for nearly 200 cities across 27 provinces.
For the new market, we focused on advancing our coordinated development of the four key areas of international business, equity investments, digital content, and FinTech. Revenue registered a record growth rate of 36.5% and reached CNY 19.9 billion. Of which, revenue from international business and digital content amounted to CNY 8.1 billion and CNY 11.6 billion respectively. In the first half of 2022, our industry chain finance business grew to a scale of nearly CNY 30 billion. We have also set forth development plans on Industrial Internet. Investments has accumulated to CNY 177 billion after an addition of equity investment at CNY 500 million. As always, we put a strong focus on customer needs and have made all-round enhancement to our operations. We've advocated the development of sales alliance and attained growth of new channels.
We've arranged coordinations of three major brands, spelling out our differentiated advantages. Making use of smart technology approaches to empower network operations, products, services, and management support, striving to enhance the quality of our network, products, and customer touchpoints. In the second half of 2022, we focus on quality enhancement, ensure the attainment of our full-year targets. We'll also quicken our pace to strengthen our capabilities, laying a solid foundation for future development. By way of reference, we've listed our major full-year business targets on this slide. Now let me turn it over to Mr. Li Ronghua for financial performance. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Dong. I'm delighted to present our 2022 interim financial results to you. In the first half of 2022, we continued to promote our transformational development and record a favorable growth in both revenue and profit.
Operating revenue was CNY 496.9 billion, up by 12% year-on-year, of which service revenue was CNY 426.4 billion, up by 8.4% year-on-year. Revenue from sales of products and others amounted to CNY 17.5 billion, up by 39.8% year-on-year. While continuing to strengthen cost management, we appropriately increased our investment to support business transformation. Operating expenses increased by 10.9% year-on-year. Benefited by the optimizations of wealth management product portfolio and the enhancement to the rates of return, interest and other income went up by 20.3% year-on-year. For the investments of assets, SPD Bank, China Tower, et cetera, also brought contributions to our returns. Income from investments accounted for using the equity method reached CNY 6.2 billion.
As a result, our net profit increased by 18.9% year-on-year to CNY 17.3 billion. Our profitability continued to stay at a leading level among top-tier global telecom operators. In terms of breakdown of revenue growth for business, the increase in telecom service revenue was mainly attributable to the growth of wireline, broadband, and applications and information services. Of which, incremental revenue contributions from wireline, broadband, and applications and information services amounted to CNY 7 billion and CNY 28.7 billion respectively. As for breakdown of revenue contribution by CHBN markets, incremental revenue contributions from Consumer market, Home market, Business market, and New market reached CNY 0.5 billion, CNY 9.4 billion, CNY 18 billion, and CNY 5.3 billion respectively.
Going forward, we'll continue to drive comprehensive and integrated development of our six BM markets, advance digital intelligent transformation, promote continuous enhancement to our business structure, and shifts of growth drivers. As part of our consistent efforts to reduce costs and enhance operational efficiency, we implemented multiple initiatives to control costs and expenses while adding new streams of income and increasing revenue. These initiatives achieved favorable outcomes. Network operations support expenses went up by 14.1% to CNY 138.2 billion. The increase mainly attributable to investment ramp-up in areas such as Smart Family, the DICT, and the constructions of smart mid-end platform to support our accelerating business transformation. In addition, we expanded the scale of our 5G and computing force network, et cetera. The corresponding operations and maintenance expenses have gone up.
Depreciation and amortization was CNY 99.5 billion, which was at the same level as last year. After excluding the impact of the adjustment to the residual value of certain assets in the first half of 2021, depreciation and amortization grew by 8.7% year-on-year on a comparable basis. Employee benefit and related expenses increased by 14.4% to CNY 63.9 billion. This is mainly because we further increased resources to nurture and recruit management talents for the business and new markets, as well as R&D talents in the fields of 5G and AICDE. Selling expenses decreased by 13.8% to CNY 26.2 billion. The decrease was mainly attributable to accelerating channel transformation, where we have strengthened our online sales and service capabilities. The efficiencies of digitalizations of marketing resources have further improved.
At the same time, some offline marketing and promotion activity was restricted due to COVID-19. Benefited by favorable growth in revenue and sound cost control, our profit level continued to rise. EBITDA increased by 7.4% year-on-year to CNY 173.9 billion. EBITDA accounted for 40.8% of telecom service revenue. Net profit increased by 18.9% year-on-year to CNY 17.3 billion. Basic earnings per share increased by 14.1% year-on-year to CNY 3.29. The company continued to record favorable cash flow. Net operating cash flow reached CNY 147.3 billion. Free cash flow was CNY 55.2 billion. The year-on-year decrease mainly attributable to two factors. First, we took active steps to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 and proactively take measures to fulfill economic and social responsibilities.
We've slowed down the cash collections and sped up payments with a view to supporting upstream and downstream operations along the industrial chain. Second, we sped up the promotions of new infrastructure layout and capital expansion was completed at a quicker speed. Our capital structure maintained stable and healthy with corporate credit ratings equivalent to China's sovereign ratings. Overall, we delivered the following performance in the first half of 2022. The double-digit growth in revenue and profit, effective cost control, abundant cash flow, as well as stable and healthy capital structure. In the second half of 2022, we'll further deepen value-oriented operating practices and strengthen centralized management, ensuring the attainment of the full-year performance targets. Moreover, we'll continue to further improve management of funds, assets, and capital efficiency, stimulating the company's vitality in value creation.
In the meantime, we'll further strengthen risk management and control, ensuring sustainable and healthy development of the company. This is the end of our presentation and analysis on our 2022 interim results.