BELGRADE (Serbia), January 31 (SeeNews) – Telenor said on Wednesday the combined EBITDA, before other items, of its wireless units in Serbia and Montenegro increased 4.4% to 1.456 billion Norwegian crowns ($189.4 million/152.2 million euro) in 2017, from 1.395 billion Norwegian crowns in the previous year.
The combined operating profit of the Norwegian telecommunications group's units in the two Balkan countries rose 2.9% to 909 million Norwegian crowns in 2017, while total revenues increased 1.8% to 3.903 billion crowns, Telenor said in its 2017 financial report.
Telenor noted it has used an exchange rate of 0.0767 Norwegian crowns per Serbian dinar in the calculation of 2017 results versus 0.0755 crowns per dinar in the previous year. It has also used an exchange rate of 9.3271 Norwegian crowns per euro in the calculation of 2017 results versus 9.2889 crowns per euro in 2016.
Telenor's subscriptions in Serbia and Montenegro countries decreased to 3.166 million at the end of December from 3.339 million a year earlier.
Telenor's wireless unit competes with Telekom Srbija's mobile arm, MTS, and VIP Mobile, a unit of Telekom Austria Group, on the Serbian market of some 7.1 million people.
Telenor's main competitor in Montenegro is T-Mobile Crna Gora, owned by the Hungarian unit of Deutsche Telekom, Magyar Telekom. M:tel, the third mobile operator in the Adriatic state of some 620,000 people, is majority owned by Telekom Srbija.
Elsewhere in Southeast Europe, the Telenor Group also operates in Bulgaria.
(1 euro = 9.56796 crowns)