China Unicom 9-month net profit plunges 81 pct

HONG KONG, Oct 21 (Reuters) - China Unicom Hong Kong Ltd , the country's second largest telecom operator, posted a 80.6 percent fall in net profit in the first nine months partly due to high marketing expenses as it tries to capture more subscribers. China Unicom's net profit fell to 1.6 billion yuan ($236.65 million) for the January-September period, from 8.2 billion a year earlier, it said in a filing to the Hong Kong stock exchange on Friday. Its dismal results come a day after bigger rival, China Mobile Ltd, reported a 3.1 percent rise in nine-month net profit to 88.1 billion yuan. China's top three telecom operators, China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom Corp Ltd, are competing to entice users as they migrate to 4G from 2G and 3G. China Unicom added 6.05 million 4G subscribers in September, taking the total number of mobile subscribers to 262 million. Analysts said they expected marketing costs to continue to weigh on the company's bottomline due to its high operating leverage and low profit margin. China Unicom announced earlier this month that its state-owned parent company could be chosen for China's pilot for mixed-ownership reform, pending government approval, which could introduce private shareholders and more management autonomy. That also means a rumoured merger with China Telecom is unlikely after the two companies entered into a strategic alliance on network sharing and new business investment collaboration at the start of the year. ($1 = 6.7610 Chinese yuan) (Reporting by Sijia Jiang in Hong Kong and Lee Chyen Yee in Singapore; Editing by Amrutha Gayathri)