SOFIA (Bulgaria), August 15 (SeeNews) – Bulgarian telecommunications group BTC [BUL:5BT], operating under the Vivacom brand, said on Friday its consolidated net profit jumped over 160% to 19 million levs ($13 million/9.7 million euro) in the first half of 2014.
The company’s adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) increased by 7.6% to 174 million levs through June as total revenue fell 1.6% to 393 million levs, BTC said in a statement.
The company’s fixed-line revenue decreased 8.7% to 185 million levs in January-June while revenue generated from mobile services increased by 5.8% to 208 million levs.
The number of Vivacom mobile subscribers amounted to some 2.7 million at the end of June, posting an increase of 10.2% over the year. Fixed voice subscribers went down by 9.7% on the year to nearly 1.3 million while fixed broadband subscribers grew by an annual 4.2% to 335,000.
The BTC group said it had over 140 million levs in receivables, representing cash and cash equivalents, from Bulgaria's troubled Corporate Commercial Bank (CCB) as of June 30. No impairment of the receivables of the group at CCB has been accrued at end-June, it added.
In June, the Bulgarian National Bank placed Corporate Commercial Bank, the country's fourth largest lender, under three-month special supervision over risk of insolvency. It also appointed conservators at the bank.
BTC, through the Vivacom brand, offers fixed-line and mobile voice, Internet access and digital TV services.
On the mobile services segment in Bulgaria, a market of around 7.2 million, BTC competes with Mobiltel, a unit of Telekom Austria Group, and Globul, a unit of Norway's Telenor.
(1 euro=1.95583 Bulgarian levs)