United Internet, which provides internet access under the brand name 1&1, has announced it generated revenue of EUR1.907 billion (USD2.69 billion) in full year 2010, an increase of 15% year-on-year. The company said that despite additional expenditure for a DSL quality drive and high start-up costs for new business fields, earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) for the twelve-month period totaled EUR357.7 million, virtually unchanged for EUR356.1 million in 2009 (excluding special items of EUR60.6 million from the sale of shares). Due in particular to scheduled depreciation of EUR21.6 million on freenet’s DSL customer base acquired in late 2009, earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) fell as expected by 9.5% year-on-year to EUR271.5 million. Consolidated net income from continued operations decreased from EUR271.2 million in 2009 to EUR127.7 million a year later. Consolidated net income from the previous year included net positive extraordinary income of EUR75.6 million, as well as non-recurring, net positive tax adjustments of EUR26.6 million, while consolidated net income of fiscal year 2010 was burdened by impairment charges of EUR13.8 million and by increased losses of associated companies of EUR31.8 million.
United’s internet access segment generated revenue of EUR1.23 billion, up 19.8% from EUR1.026 billion in 2009, and contributed EBITDA of EUR122.6 million, relatively stable compared to EUR124.1 million, while EBIT dropped as expected by 22.2% year-on-year to EUR92 million. At 31 December 2010 the company reported a total of 3.63 million accesses (up from 3.5 million a year earlier), of which 2.32 million were ‘DSL complete’ customers (2009: 1.82 million), 270,000 mobile internet customers (90,000) and 1.04 million were narrowband and resold lines (1.59 million).