April 29 (SeeNews) - A1 Telekom Austria Group said its Croatian unit, former Vipnet, recorded a 5.1% annual growth in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) to 33.3 million euro ($36.2 million) in the first three months of 2020.
The revenues of A1 Croatia, the second largest mobile operator in the Adriatic country, fell by an annual 0.9% to 101.2 million euro in the January-March period, while costs and expenses dropped by 3.6% on the year to 67.8 million euro, A1 Telekom Austria Group said in an interim financial statement published on Tuesday.
The group noted that in Croatia, mobile service revenue growth was supported by WiFi routers in the first quarter of 2020, while fixed-line service revenues were driven by solutions and connectivity and price increase.
At the same time, A1 Croatia's perational expenditure benefited from lower equipment cost, while bad debt allowance and content costs were higher, the statement read.
Capital expenditure in Croatia plunged 42.9% to 14.1 million euro in January-March.
The number of wireless subscribers of A1 Croatia rose to 1.872 million at the end of March, up from 1.795 million a year earlier. The number of fixed access lines, however, dropped to 286,000 from 299,000 in the period.
A1 Telekom Austria said that the group's EBITDA excluding restructuring rose by an annual 0.4% to 397 million euro, while the group's total revenue grew 3.4% to 1.126 billion euro in January-March, with both figures driven by markets in Central and Eastern Europe.
It added that the Covid-19 had already showed some first negative impact on its business, with travel restrictions prompted by the pandemic resulting in a drag on roaming revenues, especially in tourist destination countries Austria and Croatia.
A1 Telekom Austria changed the name of its Croatian unit to A1 Croatia from Vipnet in October 2018.
On the mobile segment in Croatia, a market of around 4.3 million people, A1 Croatia competes with the local unit of Swedish telecommunications group Tele2 and with the wireless arm of Hrvatski Telekom (HT).
However, Tele2 said last month it has closed the sale of its Croatian unit to United Group, a leading multi-play telecommunications and media services provider in Southeast Europe (SEE). The transaction was announced back in May 2019, in line with Tele2's plans to focus on the Baltic region.
($ = 0.9203 euro)