Vodafone Qatar’s net loss in line with forecast

Vodafone Qatar has posted its financial and operational results for its fiscal year ended 31 March 2010, recording a net loss of QAR673.4 million (USD184.9 million), which it said was in line with its original plan, on revenues of QAR361.5 million, 26% above its own forecast. The mobile operator launched commercially last July as the first challenger to Qatar Telecom (Qtel), following a pilot launch in March, although the bulk of its 465,000 subscriber base reported at end-March 2010 were won after it introduced pre-paid services in September. The customer total was 121% higher than predicted in Vodafone’s business plan, and gave it an 18% share of subscribers in Qatar’s cellular market. The company reported EBITDA loss of QAR225.4 million for the twelve months to the end of March 2010, but noted that quarterly adjusted EBITDA continued to improve; adjusted EBITDA loss for January-March was QAR28.7 million compared to a loss of QAR38.6 million for October-December 2009.