May 8 (SeeNews) - Globul, the Bulgarian unit of Greek mobile operator Cosmote, said on Wednesday its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) fell by 22% on the year to 26.3 million euro ($34.5 million) in the first quarter of 2013.
Revenues were down by an annual 14.6% to some 82.6 million euro in the January-March period, as a result of the mobile termination rate (MTR) cut introduced by the regulator in the beginning of July last year, Globul said in a statement.
“Subdued domestic demand due to tight consumption and stagnating incomes continued to affect the Bulgarian telecom sector in the first quarter of 2013 coupled with the ongoing competition-driven erosion of the retail prices, chiefly in the corporate segment,” the statement said.
At the end of the first quarter, the local market approached saturation with estimated penetration of over 150%, the company said.
Globul’s customer base rose by 4.5% year-on-year through March and reached nearly 4.6 million.
The company’s postpaid customer base grew by 7.0% on the year, exceeding 2.8 million in the first quarter. It represents about 63% of the company’s total client base. Globul also managed to increase its prepaid customer base by an annual 0.6% in the first three months of 2013.
Fixed-telephony services continued their stable growth in the first quarter of the year, with a subscriber base of nearly 230,000, while the mobile broadband subscriber base more than doubled on a yearly basis.
On April 26, Norway’s telecommunications company Telenor Group announced it had signed an agreement with Greece's OTE to acquire Globul for a total amount of 717 million euro on a cash and debt free basis. The transaction is a subject to relevant merger control approvals and is expected to be finalised in the third quarter of 2013. The deal also includes Germanos Bulgaria, the leading telecom retailer in the country operationally integrated with Globul.
In Bulgaria, Globul competes with Mobiltel, a unit of Telekom Austria, and the mobile arm of telecom operator Vivacom.
($ = 0.763 euro)