Cosmote Romania revenues grow 36 percent, Romtelecomaa‚¬a„¢s shrink 7 percent in 2009

Newsroom 01/03/2010 | 10:42

Telecom operator Cosmote Romania made total revenues of EUR 423 million in 2009, a 36.1 percent growth year-on-year. Its EBITDA stood at EUR 66.1 million, a three-fold increase compared to the EUR 22.5 million for 2008.

The operator’s total customer base reached 6.9 million at the end of 2009, up over 17 percent on a yearly basis, with approximately 19 percent postpaid. The company gained 1 million new customers in 2009.

Blended average revenue per user for 2009 was EUR 5. In five years on the market, Cosmote, owned by Greek OTE, has invested EUR 680 million.

Romtelecom, the largest landline operator in Romania, also owned by OTE, posted EUR 807 million in revenues, a 7.2 percent slide from 2008. In the fourth quarter of last year, Romtelecom revenues amounted to EUR 198.3 million, down 7.1 percent from the first quarter of 2008.

In an economy characterized by a GDP decline of over 7 percent in 2009, rising unemployment and a growing rate of business failures, Romanian providers of telecommunications services are estimated to have recorded double-digit revenue declines, particularly during the latter part of the year, according to OTE’s financial statement.

The quarter’s revenue decline primarily reflected a 17 percent slump in voice services.

Romtelecom increased its total number of revenue-generating units by 4.1 percent compared to 2008 year end, over 4.4 million versus fewer than 4.3 million.

In 2009, RomTelecom introduced an IPTV platform with interactive video-on-demand capability, targeting IP-based triple-play customers (VoIP, High-speed Internet and IPTV).

Romtelecom’s CDMA network had around 27,000 subscribers at the end of 2009.