Mobile telephony operator Orange Romania has posted operating profits before depreciation and amortisation for last year of 335 million euros, up 41% from the 238 million euros seen in 2003. It did not reveal figures for net profits, however.
Orange’s total revenues reached 624 million euros in 2004, 33% higher than 2003. In other words, for every euro it collected, Orange made 53 eurocents of operating profit.
As a result, Orange remains one of the most profitable non-financial companies in Romania. Its net profits for 2003 were 127 million euros (calculated at the average ROL/EUR exchange rate for 2003) from a 238 million-euro operating profit.
CAPEX (investments in tangible and intangible assets excluding licences) for last year was 145 million euros, an increase on 2003’s 111 million euros.
Like its main competitor, Connex, Orange bought a third generation mobile telephony licence last November. The 35 million-dollar fee for the frequency spectrum allocation will be paid to the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology in instalments.
The operator logged a decline in the annual rolling ARPU (average revenue per user) to 148 euros in 2004, compared with 2003 when the indicator reached 169 euros.
Orange concluded last year with 4.93 million customers in Romania (a 48% market share), up from 3.31 million at the end of 2003. The mobile telephony operator plans to boost its current number of customers by one million by the end of the year, said Richard Moat, the Orange CEO. To achieve this, Orange intends to invest at least 200 million dollars (some 155 million euros) this year, according to the company management.
The operator has invested nearly one billion dollars since entering Romania in 1997.
Orange’s strategy for this year includes the development of data services, said Richard Moat recently, despite their not generating revenues to match those in Western Europe. He added that Orange would focus on its technology for data transmission via radio waves, EDGE (Enhanced Data for GSM Evolution), since this generates 50% of their data service-related revenues, excluding SMS text messaging. However, 3G telephony is not a priority for this operator.
While with EDGE it is currently possible to receive news and certain TV series on mobile phones, users will be able to watch music videos and other favourite shows on the handset’s small screen sometime in the future, says Moat.
The increase in the number of customers in Romania for 2004 (48.9%) was said to be “especially robust” by officials from France Telecom, the owner of Orange. Other countries on this list were Egypt (34.3%) and The Netherlands (28.3%).
Total number of Orange customers worldwide rose by 11.1% to nearly 54 million.
Group-wide revenues amounted to 19.6bn euros for 2004, up 9.6% from 2003.
Operating profit before depreciation and amortisation grew by 14.2% to 7.5bn euros. Net income was 4.7bn euros, 12% lower than in the previous year.
mihai.musatoiu@zf.ro