TeliaSonera Sees Q2 Revenues Rise by 8.7%

TeliaSonera has reported an 8.7% increase in net sales to SEK 27.5 billion (US$3.7 billion), while net profit increased to SEK 4.5 billion (US$599 million), compared to SEK 4.13 billion a year ago. Net sales in local currencies and excluding acquisitions decreased 0.7 percent.

During the quarter the number of subscriptions grew by more than 2.4 million, of which 0.9 million new subscriptions in the majority-owned operations and 1.5 mil-lion in the associated companies, totaling 139.4 million.

EBITDA, excluding non-recurring items, increased 13.3 percent to SEK 9 billion (US$1.2 billion) and the margin to 32.9 percent.

Lars Nyberg, President and CEO: "I am very pleased that despite a challenging macroeconomic environment in the second quarter, we reported among the highest EBITDA, excluding non-recurring items, in the company's history. We are delivering on the issues that we can control ourselves, namely cost reductions and careful capital spending. As a result, our cash flow for the first six months more than doubled compared to last year's first half."

"Our cost efficiency measures are now having visible effects throughout our operations and in Sweden and Finland operating expenses decreased by as much as 12 percent in the second quarter. We maintained the profitability improvement in Broadband Services and also noted some effects within Mobility Services. At the same time, Eurasia maintained its high profitability."

"Looking ahead, we expect that our efforts to lower addressable costs and capital expendi-ture will offset the negative impact from declining GDP and rising unemployment in our markets. Therefore we are raising our outlook on the EBITDA margin and now expect a higher margin in 2009 than in 2008."

Posted to the site on 24th July 2009