China Unicom (Hong Kong) (HKG:0762) plans to reduce its capital expenditure as it grows its revenue for artificial intelligence technologies.

Unicom's shares dropped less than 5% during Friday's afternoon trade.

The telecommunications company's CAPEX for the year is expected to be around 50 billion yuan, down from 54.2 billion yuan in 2025, according to the company's annual results published Thursday.

The CAPEX ratio to service revenue declined to 16% in 2025. For 2026, the company expects the investment in computing power to account for over 35%.

The reduction in its CAPEX came as the company's net profit attributable to shareholders moderately climbed in 2025.

The attributable profit rose 1% to 20.8 billion yuan from 20.6 billion yuan a year earlier, with earnings per share increasing year on year to 0.68 yuan from 0.67 yuan.

Revenue slightly climbed by 0.7% to 392.2 billion yuan from 389.6 billion yuan a year earlier.

Meanwhile, the company has been focusing its expenses on boosting its AI technology. AI revenue grew by more than 140% year on year, while revenue contribution from strategic emerging industries reached over 86%.

Chairman Dong Xin said the company has been boosting its AI cloud technology and has constructed AI application pilot bases and platforms, such as the UniAI Wanxiang data engineering platform, the UniAI MaaS platform, and the UniAI Wanwu intelligent agent platform. AI was integrated more deeply into the company's Unicom Cloud, which saw its revenue rise 5.2% from a year earlier.

"We will use new algorithms and technologies to promote the integrated development of cloud, network, edge, and terminals, making computing power accessible on demand like water and electricity, thereby creating a core engine for new quality productivity," Dong said.

The company also declared a final dividend of 0.1329 per share, payable June 24 to shareholders on the record by June 5.