GT&T Q1 Marketing Costs Triple Yoy in Face of Competition

Guyana's incumbent telephone operator Guyana Telephone and Telegraph Company (GT&T) saw sales and marketing costs triple year-on-year in the first quarter of 2007 due to increased competition, GT&T's parent company Atlantic Tele-Network said in its first quarter earnings statement.

Atlantic did not provide a breakdown of GT&T's revenues, profits or the amount it spent on marketing. Nonetheless, Atlantic said that it spent US$3mn more on marketing of GT&T in Q1 compared to the same quarter last year.

Overall Atlantic's marketing costs rose 31% to US$30.2mn.

GT&T has been forced to defend its position in the mobile market since the entrance of Caribbean mobile holding company Digicel in February of this year.

"We spent nearly three times as much on sales and marketing in Guyana than a year earlier, much of it on handset promotions. While we are unlikely to continue that level of spending indefinitely, we believe that it is in GT&T's long-term interests to continue to be aggressive in its marketing activities," Atlantic's CEO Michael Prior said in the report.

GT&T ended the quarter with 310,000 subscribers. The operations in Guyana accounted for US$2mn of Atlantic's US$7.9mn year-over-year increase in mobile revenues, which reached US$18.2mn in the quarter.

Atlantic's total revenues were up 26% year-over-year in the first quarter to reach US$43.5mn."

Posted to the site on 8th May 2007