Connex' revenues up 24.4% in dollars

MobiFon, the operator of mobile telephony network Connex, concluded last year with $529.5 million in service revenues, up 24.4% compared to $425.6 million for 2002, MobiFon’s majority shareholder, Canada-based Telesystem International Wireless (TIW) announced.

The Romanian operator logged OIBDA (Operating Income Before Depreciation and Amortisation) of $281.2 million, 21.4% higher than in the year before.

MobiFon regards OIBDA as an indicator of the strength and performance for the company’s ongoing business operations, including its ability to fund discretionary spending such as capital expenditure and other investments and its ability to incur and service debt. Operating income rose 18.1% to $170.7 million last year compared to $144.6 million for 2002.

The ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) for the year 2003 reached $14.35 compared to $14.19 in 2002, sustained by the increased international interconnection revenues following the deregulation of the Romanian telecom industry.

Connex had a total of 3,457,042 net subscribers at the end of 2003, accounting for an estimated 49.0% share of the mobile telephony market in Romania.

“The fourth quarter of 2003 marked Connex’ largest quarterly subscriber growth in its history – 494,961,” said Ted Lattimore, MobiFon’s President and Chief Operating Officer.

MobiFon disbursed dividends twice last year, $59 million in April and $35.7 million in July.

MobiFon’s main shareholders are Telesystem International Wireless (Canada) and Vodafone (UK).

Mobile telephony operator Connex expects to grow three or four times faster than the domestic economy this year. “Connex will be looking for considerable growth in 2004 over 2003, about 15% to 20% increases,” Ted Lattimore was telling Ziarul Financiar about a month ago.

MobiFon is also planning to exceed the 4 million-customer milestone “well before the year end”, because “we finished 2003 with more customers than we anticipated,” Lattimore added back then.

MobiFon’s archrival, Orange Romania ended 2003 with $527 million revenues and 3.3 million subscribers, according to its financial reports. Its total revenues calculated in dollars had amounted to $370 million in 2002.

Orange Romania did not release net or operating income figures for last year.
victor@zf.ro