COVID-19 weighing on Hong Kong telco SmarTone

The pandemic weighs on Hong Kong telecommunications companies, SmarTone's preliminary results show. It reported a 6% drop in the first half and a 3% increase in revenue in what CEO Allen Fung described as "a rather difficult" period. "There's still a lot of headwinds, so it's not an easy operating environment," he told an online briefing Thursday. But he says the underlying performance has shown SmarTone's robustness. Excluding the state COVID-19 grants last year, profits increased by 34%, while EBITDA was higher than before COVID-19. He also pointed to strong growth in 5G deployment, 5G home broadband and business. 5G…