Telekom Romania’s revenues down 9 pct in Q4 2018 to EUR 242 mln

Telekom Romania’s total revenues declined by 9 percent year-on-year in the last quarter of 2018 to EUR 242.2 million mainly due to lower revenues from retail fixed services.

Combined adjusted EBITDA in Romania decreased by 39.5 percent to EUR 24.7 million in Q4 2018, affected by one-off receivable provisions.

Retail fixed services’ revenues decreased by 15.7 percent.

“The main contributor to this drop was fixed voice revenues where a combination of lower fixed telephony subscriber base paired with voice ARPU deterioration led to a negative performance,” the company said.

Total revenues from FMC services increased by 9.1 percent as the number of FMC subscribers rose 44 percent year-on-year up to 726,000 customers.

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The Internet TV (IPTV) segment continued the upward trend, with customers up by 13 percent compared to the same quarter of 2017.

In the same time, there was a 28 percent increase in customers using premium TV content/sports packages, “which shows a favorable response of the customers to Telekom’s improved TV options,” according to the company.

At the end of 2018, Telekom Romania reported 1.14 million broadband subscribers (including FMC), down by 3.1 percent compared to end-2017.

Voice users (including FMC) reached 2.14 million at the end of 2018, up 2.1 percent year-on-year.

“Higher revenues from Wholesale Services primarily reflect the increase in international transit traffic business,” Telekom said.

Telekom Romania Mobile’s customer base totaled 4.6 million at the end of 2018, down 2.5 percent from the year-earlier level, due to the deactivation of inactive customers.

Of the total customer base, 34 percent were postpaid. On this segment, business customers number increased by 9 percent.

Telekom hopes that its Romanian operations took decisive steps in the fourth quarter to return to healthy financial and operating conditions.

“Management believes that following the significant one-off Bad Debt provisions charged, in mobile operations, during the year to account for billing issues following a change in systems, together with cost restructuring and CAPEX initiatives underway, it is well positioned to stabilize its operations going forward,” the company says.