Carphone Warehouse 3Q Revenue +31.8% On Xmas Sales

LONDON -(Dow Jones)- Carphone Warehouse, the UK broadband and mobile phone provider, Friday said third quarter revenues grew 31.8%, receiving a boost from strong Christmas mobile phone sales and continued demand for its "free" broadband product.

In a trading update the company said that total mobile phone connections were up 19.2% to 3.26 million for the thirteen weeks to Dec. 30, while like-for-like retail revenues grew 7.3%.

Carphone, which last year stirred up the UK telecommunications market by launching a "free" broadband product, said 413,000 customers had been migrated over to its unbundled broadband service, including 281,000 AOL customers. The company added that it had unbundled 569 telephone exchanges and was well on target to achieve its goal of 1,000 by May.

The company said it anticipated that its full year results will be in line with current market expectations.

Chief Executive Charles Dunstone said in a statement: "We have had another very good Christmas period. Delivering profitable like-for-like growth after last year's very strong performance is a great achievement."

In October, Carphone Warehouse bought AOL UK for GBP370 million in a deal that brought it two million UK Internet customers, making it the third largest broadband provider in the UK, behind NTL and BT Group.

In addition to broadband, Carphone Warehouse sells mobile phones and related-products and services in 1,921 stores in the UK, Ireland, Spain, France, Portugal, Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Sweden and Switzerland. Its biggest market is the UK, where it operates 700 stores. It opened a further 66 new shops during the second-quarter.

Company Web site: http://www.cpwplc.com

-By Daniel Thomas, Dow Jones Newswires; 44-20-7842-9264; dan.thomas@dowjones.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires "

Posted to the site on 12th January 2007