Business | Telecoms
etisalat first-quarter profit jumps 37%
etisalat, the second-largest Arab telecommunications firm by market value, posted a 37.3 per cent rise in first-quarter net profit, beating analysts forecasts.
- Reuters
- Published: 00:00 April 17, 2007
Abu Dhabi: etisalat, the second-largest Arab telecommunications firm by market value, posted a 37.3 per cent rise in first-quarter net profit, beating analysts forecasts.
etisalat made Dh1.84 billion ($501 million) in the three months to March 31, up 37.3 per cent from the year-earlier period, when it made Dh1.34 billion, the company said in a statement. The earnings growth is above the average 21.7 per cent increase in profit analysts forecast in a Reuters survey. Analysts said etisalat's profits would range between Dh1.46 billion and Dh1.83 billion.
etisalat said profit excluding minority interest was Dh1.77 billion. Its revenues jumped 31 per cent to Dh4.81 billion. Earnings per share rose to Dh0.37 in the quarter from Dh0.27 in the year-earlier period.
Its subscriber base grew during the period to 5.78 million, five per cent higher than at the end of 2006.
Subscriber base
etisalat had 5.5 million mobile phone users at the end of 2006 and 4.76 million subscribers at the end of the first quarter of 2006.
Telephone and Internet lines were 1.3 million and 700,000 at the end of March, etisalat said, without giving comparative figures.
etisalat said in February that it had put its acquisition plans on hold for six months to integrate assets from a $6.5 billion spending spree since 2004.
It plans to start mobile phone operators in Egypt - where it led a consortium last summer paying $2.9 billion for the country's third mobile phone licence - and Afghanistan in May.
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