Following the trend of 2010, the first quarter of 2011 has been equally challenging for the market and the telecom industry, with countinuously adverse macroeconomic conditions and low consumer expenditure. Fierce competition has led to continuous erosion of the retail prices in the corporate segment while mobile penetration has exceeded 140%.
GLOBUL’s postpaid customer base increased by almost 8% from Q1’2010, reaching a total of 2.3 million, or 58.6% of total customer base. The migration of prepaid customers to postpaid through innovative offers has continued, though less intensively than in the beginning of 2010, leading to a decrease in the prepaid customer base. As a result, GLOBUL’s total customer base at the end of Q1 2011 exceeded 3.9 million, over 2% higher than in 2010.
GLOBUL’s fixed line services continued their strong growth in Q1’2011, with the subscriber base exceeding 150,000 customers. Mobile data services also recorded a significant increase vs. Q1’2010, with the subscribers’ base posting a growth of over 40%.
Service revenues declined by 8.4% in Q1’2011, mainly due to lower interconnection rates, macroeconomic factors and intense competition in the business postpaid segment.
Despite the challenging business environment, GLOBUL & Germanos managed to reduce their cost base by over 5.6% compared to Q1’2010 through consistent cost rationalization initiatives focusing primarily on, network, advertising, billing and administrative expenses.
As a result of the above measures, Earnings before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization (EBITDA) declined by 9.9% compared to Q1’2010, while the company’s EBITDA margin stood at 1 pp lower than prior year.
Average usage per customer continued to grow with blended AMOU for Q1’2011 at 147 min, or over 16% vs. Q1’2010, while blended ARPU for Q1’2011 has reached BGN 15, or 10% below same period prior year.
Summary Financial Results for GLOBUL & Germanos for the 3 months ended March 31, 2011 & 2010.*
In EUR mln. |
Q1 2011 |
Q1 2010 |
Change |
Revenues |
96.4 |
104.0 |
-7.3% |
EBITDA |
37.3 |
41.4 |
-9.9% |
EBITDA margin |
38.7% |
39.8% |
-1.1pp |
*Total figures are after COSMOTE intragroup eliminations.