Summary

  • China Tower's Smart Tower and energy businesses generated RMB7.923 billion in the first half of 2026, up 14.2%. Their revenue growth does not yet establish their return on invested capital.
  • Attributable profit rose 30.1%, but operating cash flow fell 75.1%. Lower depreciation helped earnings; slower customer payments weighed on cash.

China Tower's customers do not all need somewhere to put an antenna. Some need a charged battery for delivery work. Others need a high vantage point from which to monitor a forest or a river. For a business built around renting space on telecom towers, these are useful new reasons for someone to pay.

The company reported 1.493 million battery-exchange users in the first half of 2026. Its Smart Tower and energy businesses together grew revenue by 14.2%. Then comes the figure that seems to seal the success story: profit attributable to shareholders rose 30.1%.

That is where the interim report becomes more interesting than the growth story. Much of the help to earnings came from lower depreciation, including on old tower assets. Meanwhile, customers were taking longer to pay. Group revenue fell 1.8% to RMB48.693 billion; profit reached RMB7.489 billion; operating cash flow fell to RMB7.135 billion from RMB28.679 billion a year earlier. The new services are growing, but they cannot explain the accounts on their own.

More work for the tower estate

China Tower groups Smart Tower and energy under “Two Wings”. Together they produced RMB7.923 billion of revenue, up 14.2%, increasing their share of the total to 16.3% from 14.0%.

Smart Tower contributed RMB5.332 billion. The company describes using elevated sites for forest-fire prevention, farmland protection and river monitoring, with more than 260,000 digital towers supporting such applications. A location chosen for communications can have value to a different customer without becoming a different location.

Energy contributed RMB2.591 billion. Battery exchange accounted for RMB1.595 billion and backup power for RMB996 million. The results presentation describes the former's work with delivery users and the latter's power-support services. The customers and equipment are more tangible than the corporate label.

For scale, the much larger telecom business still generated RMB40.357 billion: RMB35.263 billion from towers and RMB5.094 billion from distributed antenna systems, which provide coverage in places such as buildings. The remaining RMB413 million is identified in the accounts as other revenue. The newer services matter, but tower rental still accounts for most sales.

Why profit rose while cash fell

A tower can finish depreciating without finishing its working life. It still carries equipment and needs upkeep, but its old depreciation charge no longer weighs on profit. China Tower points mainly to acquired tower assets becoming fully depreciated, alongside a changed depreciation period for indoor distribution assets, to explain a RMB6.457 billion fall in depreciation and amortisation, to RMB19.141 billion.

That is a substantial boost to reported earnings, not a new customer payment. EBITDA, which adds depreciation and amortisation back to operating profit, fell 11.6% to RMB30.252 billion. The distinction matters when trying to judge what the battery swaps and monitoring services have actually achieved.

Cash depends on a less abstract event: being paid. China Tower attributes the operating-cash decline mainly to longer customer payment cycles and more settlement using bills. Investment continued, with capital expenditure of RMB11.650 billion. Subtracting that from operating cash flow gives the company's free-cash-flow measure of minus RMB4.515 billion. The operating cash collected that half-year did not cover the investment bill. That does not establish a permanent financing problem, or identify the newer services as its cause.

There is a dividend to keep in the right period, too. The board declared RMB0.19122 a share before tax on August 11, after the June 30 reporting date, for an estimated total of RMB3.343 billion. That is separate from the RMB5.688 billion of final dividends for 2025 already paid during the half-year.

The unanswered question is narrower than it looks

The report does disclose capital allocation: RMB2.624 billion went to Two Wings within the RMB11.650 billion total. It also identifies some related costs, including technical-support charges mainly for Smart Tower and energy platforms. What it does not provide is a complete, separately allocated profit-and-capital-return calculation for those businesses. The company reports a single operating segment. Revenue categories are not standalone profit accounts.

The old customer relationships remain important. China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom, both shareholders and major customers, together supplied 84.2% of revenue. Their service framework agreements run from 2023 through 2027. Across the tower estate, 2.172 million sites carried 3.871 million tenancies, or 1.78 per site; that total includes Smart Tower users, not just telecom operators.

The attractive idea is easy to see: get more work out of infrastructure that already exists. The harder part is finding out what each extra job costs, how much capital it ties up and when the customer pays. Battery swaps and forest monitoring have taken China Tower beyond the familiar antenna tenant. Their place in the sales figures is established; their return on the money invested still needs a fuller account.

Further reading

Earlier coverage includes the results-call transcript, a tower-industry overview and reporting on the original tower venture. The earlier investor landing page and 2026 results address remain references; the financial figures above come from the linked interim report. See also the China Tower directory entry Only for Strategic Circle.