A subscriber base more than twice the size of the US population. Plus more cash to hand than Apple. There is a lot to like about China Mobile – unless you are a shareholder, that is.

The world’s largest mobile service provider, with 710m subscribers, announced full-year earnings on Thursday that neatly beat expectations. But it also neatly avoided a discussion on its cash mountain, which is the largest of any listed company. China Mobile’s net funds to hand – cash and short-term equivalents less total debt – are equivalent to $60bn yet sit in bank deposits. That beats Microsoft with its $54bn in cash, according to Capital IQ data, and it is half as much again as Apple excluding the tech giant’s long-term bond holdings. Given that, China Mobile’s plan to maintain its dividend payout ratio at 43 per cent – or a dividend yield of 4 per cent for 2012 – was disappointing. If the company was not 75 per cent owned by the Chinese government and was based in, say, Cupertino or Redmond, someone would be agitating for a return to investors.

Admittedly, China Mobile has some hefty capital expenditure to fund. Although its 3G network was built by its parent company – the state, in other words – China Mobile will bear the costs of building a 4G network, which it estimates to be Rmb42bn. It will also increase capex by 50 per cent this year to about Rmb190bn. It did not say how this will be funded, but it equates to about half of its cash pile. Eventually, it will also buy its 3G network from the state, which has cost about Rmb100bn to build so far, Barclays estimates.