That compared with a HK$604 million profit a year earlier.
The loss is worse than the consensus expectations of seven analysts polled by Bloomberg News. They said the company would probably report a net loss of HK$323 million in the year ended June 30.
Competition among Hong Kong's service operators in 1999 and 2000 resulted in falling consumer costs for airtime and mobile phones, which analysts saw as the main factor behind losses for SmarTone.
"The reason is because of the intensifying price war," said Colin McCallum, a telecommunication analyst at HSBC Securities. "That really was what is dragging down the earnings."
The company reported a net loss of HK$393.6 million (US$50.6 million) during the six months through December, mostly because it wrote off HK$488 million. The company said in March it expects the exceptional loss for the full year to remain the same and added that no similar write offs would be repeated.
Minus a HK$488 million charge, the underlying profit for the company was HK$125 million.
Sun Hung Kai Properties Ltd, one of Hong Kong's largest property developers, owns 26.3 percent of SmarTone, followed by British Telecommunications Plc, the No 1 UK phone company, with 20 percent.
Play video
There are currently no comments for this post.