América Móvil's Net Profit Up 31.9% to US$3.96bn

Mexican mobile telephony group América Móvil posted a net profit of 43.4bn (US$3.96bn) pesos in 2006, up 31.9% compared to 32.9bn pesos in 2005, the company said in a statement.

Revenues reached 234bn pesos, a 23.6% increase over 190bn pesos last year. Ebitda reached 86.01bn pesos, up 50.4%, while the Ebitda margin increased to 36.7%.

However, fourth quarter net profits were not as positive reaching 10.8bn pesos, a 28% drop from 4Q05.

Region wide, the company added 31.4mn mobile subscribers in 2006 to finish the year with 125mn subscribers, a 33.7% increase year-on-year. Mexico contributed the most net additions, with 7.3mn, followed by Colombia, Brazil and Colombia, with 5.7mn, 5.2mn and 3.4mn, respectively.

The company's revenues were in line with expectations, but the increased Ebitda hit a higher mark than expected, analyst Carlos Constantini of the Deutsche Bank said in a research note.

"AMX remains one of the best growth stories in the telecom space," Constantini said in the report.

The fourth quarter also saw the addition of 2.1mn new mobile subscribers through the acquisition of Verizon Dominicana from US telco Verizon in December. The mobile unit, now called Claro, and the fixed line unit Codetel with its 734,000 fixed line customers contributed 951mn pesos in December.

For the Mexican market, the company expects to have installed a 3G network sometime in the beginning of 2008, but wants handset prices to fall before the service would be viable, AMX CEO Daniel Hajj said in the conference call.

"We are testing 3G today, I think we are going to invest in some cities for 3G during 2007," Hajj said.

Additionally, the company expects to unveil push-to-talk service next month."

Posted to the site on 9th February 2007