February 22 (SeeNews) - The adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) of Telekom Romania Mobile fell by an annual 28.8% to 58.2 million euro ($71.7 million) in 2017, its parent company, Greece's OTE, said on Thursday.
Adjusted EBITDA margin fell to 12.5% from 17.9%, OTE said in an interim financial statement. Telekom Romania Mobile's total revenues rose by 1.7% on the year to 464.9 million euro in 2017.
Telekom Romania Mobile’s total customer base shrank by 11.1% on the year to 4.748 million as of end-December, reflecting the elimination of inactive prepaid cards, while the number of postpaid customers rose slightly year on year. The percentage of postpaid customers on the total base increased to 34.5%, in 2017 compared to 30.5% a year ago.
In the fourth quarter alone, Telekom Romania Mobile booked a 14.7 million euro EBITDA, down 16.9% on the year. Total revenues rose 14.4% on the year in the last quarter of 2017 to 139.5 million euro, largely due to higher postpaid revenues and higher handset sales.
The sister company of Telekom Romania Mobile, fixed-line operator Telekom Romania Communications, posted an adjusted EBITDA of 101.9 million euro in 2017, 9% higher on the year, OTE said on Thursday.
Deutsche Telekom is present in Romania through its 40% shareholding in OTE. OTE's units in Romania - fixed-line operator RomTelecom and mobile operator Cosmote - were rebranded as Telekom Communications Romania and Telekom Mobile Romania, respectively, in September 2014.
On Monday, Telekom Romania group said that it has begun the process of rebranding of Germanos shops into Telekom. Germanos is a Greek telecommunications retail company which was acquired in 2006 by Cosmote.
In December, all mobile entities of Telekom Romania merged under Telekom Romania Mobile Communications SA. The merger concentrated the entire mobile telephony operations of Germanos Telecom Romania SA, Sunlight Romania Filiala Bucuresti SRL and Telemobil SA, as absorbed companies.
($ = 0.8117 euro)