Telenor's Jan-Sep EBITDA in Serbia, Montenegro rises slightly

The combined operating profit of the Norwegian telecommunications group's units in the two Balkan countries contracted 3.3% year-on-year to 692 million Norwegian crowns in January-September, while total revenues dropped 2% to 2.854 billion crowns, Telenor said in its financial report for the first nine months of 2017.

Telenor noted it has used an exchange rate of 0.0755 Norwegian crowns per Serbian dinar in the calculation of January-September 2017 results versus 0.0762 crowns per dinar in the prior-year period. It has also used an exchange rate of 9.2340 Norwegian crowns per euro in the calculation of 2017 results versus 9.3758 crowns per euro in the first nine months of 2016.

Telenor's subscriptions in the two countries decreased to 3.301 million at the end of September from 3.487 million a year earlier. At the end of 2016, the company had a total of 3.34 million subscribers in the two countries.

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 7.2 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 630,000 people, is majority owned by Telekom Srbija.

Elsewhere in Southeast Europe, the Telenor Group also operates in Bulgaria.

(1 euro = 9.43473 crowns)