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Elisa Q1 2009 - Total Mobile Base Surpasses 3 Million
The Q1 09 numbers from Elisa have been reported using a new analysis, which focuses on the type of customer, rather than the physical network. Thus we get revenues and EBITDA split between consumer and corporate rather than fixed and mobile. Frankly, this doesn't help much. We can see that overall revenues are down from €367m to €351m, but that this hasn't hurt profitability. EBITDA is up from €108m to €115m, operating profits from €57.2m to €61.7m and after tax, from €40.2 to €41.2m.
Happily, Elisa still publishes a proper analysis of its activities (albeit in a separate document) and if we look to this, we see that the mobile side has seen a drop in revenues from €223m in Q1 08 to €212m, but EBITDA has held up well, at €63m against €60m. The fixed side has also seen a drop in revenues, from €156m to €150m, while EBITDA here is also up, from €50m to €54m. The mobile business in Estonia also posted lower revenues, down from €24m to €20m and this time, EBITDA was affected, falling from €9m to €7m. Turning back to the Q1 release, with its new analysis, we can attribute responsibility for the lower revenues to Elisa's consumer customers, as this side of the business saw a reduction in revenues from €221m to €202m, while corporate sales rose from €146m to €150m. This tells us that consumer demand has fallen while corporate has held up - but this insight doesn't get us very far.
The operational numbers show a 12.3% increase in mobile customers, this being made up of a 3.1% increase in Estonia to 337.6k and a 13.5% rise in Finnish numbers, to 2.688m. The combination has taken Elisa past the 3m mark for the first time – with 25.6k to spare. ARPUs, however, are down from €25.9 to €24.1, despite a rise in non-voice spend. Working back through the numbers, it seems that the drop in revenues is almost entirely due to a fall in the level of equipment sales year on year – the ARPUs imply service revenue numbers of about €183m and €189m, suggesting a drop of about €17m to €23m in non-service revenue.
Posted to the site on 4th May 2009
This article was extracted from The Mobile World Briefing, the weekly newsletter from The Mobile World.
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