November 12 (SeeNews) - Telekom Austria's Bulgarian wireless unit, Mobiltel, had a 1.2% drop in its nine-month operating income to 160.9 million euro ($201.6 million) on lower EBITDA and higher depreciation and amortisation charges in the third quarter, the parent company said on Wednesday.
Mobiltel’s earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA), grew by 5.1% on the year to 288.6 million euro through September, as revenue rose by 5.0% to 499 million euro, Telekom Austria said in a statement. EBITDA between July and September, however, was 1.4% down on the year to 100 million euro.
The increase in the nine-month revenue was driven by higher monthly rental and traffic revenues, which compensated for lower visitor roaming revenues following the introduction of EU roaming regulation.
Mobiltel’s customer base increased by 7.9% year-on-year to 5.194 million customers at the end of September, but the company’s market share edged down by 0.4 percentage points to 49.9%. The mobile penetration rate in Bulgaria, population 7.6 million, rose to 136.8% through September from 125.2% a year earlier.
In Bulgaria Mobiltel competes with Globul, a unit of Greek wireless phone operator Cosmote, and the smaller Vivatel, owned by Bulgarian telecoms group BTC.
Besides Mobiltel, the wireless operations of Telekom Austria group (www.telecom.at) include Belarussian Velcom, Mobilkom Austria, Croatia's Vipnet, Slovenia's Si.mobil, Serbia's Vip mobile and Macedonia's Vip.
The group had a 6.4% rise in the nine-month revenue to 3,863.8 billion euro and EBITDA rose by 3.0% to 1,507.6 million euro.
EBITDA is driven by international operations and the consolidation of Velcom, the company said.
($ = 0.798 euro)