BELGRADE (Serbia), May 4 (SeeNews) – Telenor said on Thursday the combined EBITDA, before other items, of its wireless units in Serbia and Montenegro fell to 300 million Norwegian crowns ($34.7 million/31.8 million euro) in the first quarter of 2017, from 317 million crowns a year earlier.
The combined operating profit of the Norwegian telecommunications group's units in the two countries contracted 10.4% year on year to 173 million Norwegian crowns, while total revenues dropped 9.2% to 854 million crowns, Telenor said in its first quarter 2017 financial report.
The company invested 67 million crowns in Serbia and Montenegro during the three-month period, down from 71 million crowns a year ago.
Telenor's subscriptions in the two ex-Yugoslav countries decreased by 88,000 during the quarter. At the end of 2016, the company had 3.3 million subscribers in the two countries.
Telenor's wireless unit competes on the Serbian market of some 7.2 million people with Telekom Srbija's mobile arm, MTS, and VIP Mobile, a unit of Telekom Austria Group.
Telenor's main rival 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, Telenor Group also operates in Bulgaria.
(1 euro = 9.42336 crown)