Dubai: Mobily’s problems piled up on Wednesday after Saudi Arabia’s second largest mobile operator said it made a $243 million (Dh892 million) loss in 2014, had breached covenants on long-term loans and removed its chief executive.
Saudi’s bourse regulator suspended Mobily’s shares before trading on Wednesday. They have fallen by 56 per cent since an accounting scandal first broke in November, wiping $9.1 billion from its market value.
Mobily — officially known as Etihad Etisalat — made a loss of 913 million riyals ($243.4 million) in 2014 after it took an additional charge of 1.13 billion riyals, it said in a statement to Riyadh’s bourse that summarised its audited results.
This compares with a profit of 219.8 million riyals announced in January’s unaudited earnings, which included a fourth-quarter loss of 2.28 billion riyals.
The company did not specify on Wednesday whether its earnings for the fourth-quarter of 2014 had also been revised.
The loss is another setback for Mobily, whose problems stem from what it describes as accounting errors relating to the booking of revenue from wholesale broadband leases and mobile promotional campaigns.