Vodafone Romania service revenues overshoot $1bn mark

Service revenue of mobile telephony operator Vodafone Romania increased by 39% to 1.008 billion dollars in the fiscal year 2006 that ended March 31, 2006, Vodafone Group Plc, the owner of the company announced yesterday.

Vodafone notes that its subsidiaries from Romania and the Czech Republic have been performing beyond the group”s initial expectations at the time of takeover.

EBITDA (earnings before interests, taxes, depreciation and amortisation) reached 510.5 million dollars.

In the quarter that ended on March 31, 2006, Vodafone Romania added 252,000 customers to the total number of customers, increasing the customer base to 6.384 million. Out of the total number of customers, 64.9% were prepaid subscribers and the remainder were postpaid subscribers.

Average monthly revenue per user (ARPU) dropped in the first three months of this year to 13.9 dollars (27 dollars for postpaid subscribers and 6 dollars for prepaid subscribers). ARPU in the last quarter of 2005 stood at 15.4 dollars, or 29.5 dollars for postpaid subscribers and 7 dollars for prepaid subscribers.

The number of call minutes used witnessed a decline in the first quarter of 2006, to 1.914 billion, compared with 1.931 billion in the last quarter of 2005. At the same time, the figures were higher than the 1.754 billion from July through September last year. The number of 3G users in the Vodafone Romania network was 135,249 at the end of March.

Vodafone Romania is the second leading mobile telephony operator on the domestic market in terms of number of customers, after Orange Romania, which totalled 7.1 million customers at the end of March 2006.

Vodafone Group Plc yesterday unveiled plans to return an extra 3 billion pounds ($5.6 billion) to investors and boosted its dividend on Tuesday, as it posted earnings that beat analysts” average forecast, as reported by Reuters. The firm boosted its annual dividend payout to 6.07 pence, up 49 percent and smashing analysts” top forecast of 5.5 pence.