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OTE Revenues Shrink, As Do Losses
Published on:
Greece's OTE has reported a fall in fourth-quarter revenues of 9.1% to EUR1.13 billion (US$1.5 billion), but improved its net loss, which came in at EUR43.7 million (US$57 million) compared to a loss of EUR77 million a year ago.
While the difficult economic environment in Greece continued to weigh on OTE's performance, the bulk of the revenue drop reflects mobile termination rate (MTR) cuts severely impacting both fixed and mobile operations in most of the countries in which OTE operates. In mobile operations, nearly 60% of the revenue shortfall compared to Q4'11 is due to MTR cuts.
The reduction in losses is due to continued cost-cutting which has reduced annualised costs by EUR600 million over over the past two years after accepting 1,500 voluntary redundancies.
Commenting on OTE's performance in the fourth quarter and full year, Michael Tsamaz, Chairman & CEO , noted: "In markets that remain extremely challenging, we've achieved ahead of schedule all of the objectives we had set for ourselves. We preserved a healthy operating cash flow generation in the face of lower revenues, disposed non-core assets, and through an active refinancing program since last summer we strengthened our financial structure and extended the maturity profile of our debt."
In international mobile telephony operations, the Q4'12 revenue declines in Bulgaria and Romania were entirely due to severe termination rate cuts. In Albania, top-line performance was roughly unchanged in the quarter, leading to a full-year drop of 5.9%, a significant improvement from the previous year (12M'11: -21.1%).
Group debt dell to EUR2.9 billion at the end of the year.
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