|
|
Eircom Q3 2007/08 Results - On the Brink of a Million Subscribers
Published on: 4th June 2008
Ireland's third placed operator Meteor, wholly owned by fixed-line incumbent Eircom, stands poised to break the 1m customer barrier, having finished the first quarter of 2008 with 975k customers. Although Q1 08 was the slowest quarter for the operator for six years, both absolutely and proportionately, Meteor kept its total moving forward by 13k (+1.35%), whilst market leader Vodafone saw a decline of a thousand customers and O2 recorded just 1.02% growth.
In fact, fourth operator Three had the strongest quarter in proportionate terms with growth of 9.1%, but this was not enough to prevent Meteor gaining another 0.1pp of market share to take its total to 19.2pp at the end of March, from 17.6pp 12 months earlier.
Meteor also managed to hike its cumulative average ARPU back over ¢â€š¬40 a month for only the second time in its recorded history, the March figure ending at ¢â€š¬40.03, up from ¢â€š¬39.90 in December and ¢â€š¬38.20 a year earlier. (It should be noted here that Eircom moved its financial year-end from March to June last year, and that the quoted average for the six months to March 07 was in fact ¢â€š¬39.44). Nevertheless, the year-on-year financial comparatives reinforce the story: Q1 mobile revenues after eliminations were up 26% to ¢â€š¬109m on the back of a 17% increase in the size of the customer base, whilst EBITDA almost doubled from ¢â€š¬16m to ¢â€š¬30m. This progress made a difference to profitability at the operating level, as the pro-forma loss of ¢â€š¬4m for the nine months ended 31s March 2007 turned into a ¢â€š¬16m profit for the nine months ended 31st March 2008.
The improvement in the profitability of Eircom's mobile business was somewhat eclipsed by the strides it made with its fixed business. Whilst cost increases in mobile were limited to 14.6%, on the fixed side pro-forma overheads were 2.5% lower, mainly due to headcount reductions and lower pension costs. Nevertheless with revenues up by less than 1% this made little difference to the overall picture.
What made more of a difference was through-put from the restructuring of the business, largely relating to the disposal of property and investments, as well as "construction income". This boosted the stated operating profit by 120% to ¢â€š¬369m and saw the bottom line - in the red to the tune of ¢â€š¬5m for last year - stand at a healthy ¢â€š¬151m.
Tags: [arpu] [o2] [rcom] [eircom] [Ireland]
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
| |