April 28 (SeeNews) - Croatia's biggest telecommunications operator, Hrvatski Telekom [ZSE:HT-R-A], said on Friday its consolidated net profit, after minority interests, increased 9.5% on the year to 149 million kuna ($21.7 million/19.9 million euro) in the first quarter of 2017.
"In the first quarter of 2017, Hrvatski Telekom continues with the trend of increasing key financial indicators and is on a stable path of growth. In the next months, we will focus on further investment in our infrastructure", Davor Tomaskovic, president of the management board of Hrvatski Telekom, said in a statement filed with the Zagreb bourse.
Hrvatski Telekom's consolidated revenues in the three months through March expanded 8.7% on the year to 1.8 billion kuna.
Revenue was boosted by the consolidation of Montenegrin peer Crnogorski Telekom, which Hrvatski Telekom acquired
in January, and by the growth of key segments including mobile operations, broadband access and television, wholesale and energy.
EBITDA, before exceptional items, added 7.4% to 674 million kuna in the first quarter of 2017, while the EBITDA margin decreased to 37.1% , down 0.4 percentage points year on year.
Hrvatski Telekom continued to make substantial investments through March, with capital investments increasing by 16.6% including the acquisition of Crnogorski Telekom. Without this effect, capital investments in the first quarter increased by 9.7% on the year to 344 million kuna.
The telco's mobile subscribers increased 0.2% on the year to 2.21 million at the end of March, with prepaid subscribers decreasing 3.8% to 1.0 million.
Fixed-line customers dropped 4.6% on the year to 911,000 due to the market trend of fixed to mobile and IP substitution. The number of broadband subscribers rose by 3.3% to 621,000.
The group’s TV customers, including IPTV, DTH and cable TV, increased 5.3% on the year to 408,000 at the end of the first quarter, as a result of continuous improvements to service and programme offers through premium content and enriched exclusive TV content.
In mobile network, "indoor" 4G population coverage has increased to 71.8% (increase of 3.6 p.p.) and “outdoor“ coverage increased to 97.6% (increase of 0.7 p.p.) since the beginning of 2017, the telco added.
In January, Hrvatski Telekom signed a share purchase agreement with Hungary's Magyar Telekom to acquire a 76.53% stake in Crnogorski Telekom.
Hrvatski Telekom is 51%-owned by Deutsche Telekom.
(1 euro=7.46983 Croatian kuna)