Telekom Austria expects to see a strong first quarter and a return to group revenue growth of around 2% in 2015, after the company swung to a net loss and reported a 4% decline in revenue for 2014.
The operator, whi ch is majority owned by Mexico’s America Movil, was in optimistic mood following the release of its fourth-quarter and full-year results for 2014, with CEO Hannes Ametsreiter also noting that the company has room for acquisitions in a three-digit million euro range, Reuters reported.
No specific projects are planned at this time, however. Carlos Slim, the owner of America Movil, has said in the past that he wants to use the Austrian group as a basis for further expansion into Central and Eastern Europe, where Telekom Austria already has operations in six countries.
In 2014, the group posted a net loss of €185.4 million compared to a net profit of €52.1 million in 2013, although it said that this still exceeded overall expectations considering the negative impact from a €400 million impairment charge in Bulgaria. Excluding one-off effects, the company said the net result would have amounted to about €190 million.
The “ EBITDA comparable” declined slightly by 0.1 per cent to €1.27 billion. Including the effects of impairment charges and restructuring costs, EBITDA dropped 28.1% to €850.8 million. Group revenue declined by 4% to €4 billion in 2014. The company said this decline was mainly attributable to European regulatory effects in the roaming and interconnection areas totalling €128.2 million.
The company reported a fourth-quarter loss of around €49 million and said it also expected underlying profit as well as revenue to increase in 2015.
“We are now well equipped to master the challenges lying ahead in the telecommunications market. By reducing net debt by almost one third, we were able to achieve a net debt/EBITDA ratio, which is in line with the industry average. After a year of consolidation and based on a growth forecast of 2% for the full-year 2015, we are lo oking to the future with optimism,” said Siegfried Mayrhofer, CFO of the Telekom Austria Group.
The company said it planned to keep dividend steady at 5 cents per share and would spend around €700 million-€750 million on capex, after investing €757 million in 2014.
America Movil also reported its fourth-quarter results, which showed an 82% slump in profit due to foreign exchange losses. The company said net profit in the last three months of 2014 fell to 3.083 billion pesos (€180 million) from 17.177 billion pesos in the same period a year earlier.
Revenue increased by 12.3% to 229.304 billion pesos, which Reuters noted was mostly driven by the inclusion of Telekom Austria in its results.
