Ooredoo’s Q1 EBITDA falls 3.1% on 5% revenue increase

Qatar Telecom (Ooredoo) has posted a 13.6% year-on-year rise in first-quarter net profit to QAR808 million (USD221.8 million), on a 5% increase in consolidated revenues to QAR8.4 billion, driven mainly by improved performance from full-service operations in Qatar and mobile operations in Algeria, Indonesia and Iraq. Consolidated EBITDA in January-March 2013 fell by 3.1% y-o-y to QAR3.7 billion driving quarterly EBITDA margin down by around four percentage points to 44%. Consolidated mobile customers increased by 7.7% y-o-y to 91 million at 31 March 2013. In Qatar, in Q1 2013 revenue grew by 4.9% y-o-y to QAR1.6 billion (around 19% of the group’s total turnover), although the company’s domestic EBITDA fell at a steeper rate than the group at large, as the Qatar-only figure dropped by 3.4% y-o-y to QAR771 million in the first three months of the year, partly due to heavy spending on Ooredoo’s direct fibre broadband and 4G LTE mobile network expansions.