freenet has announced its financial results for the third quarter of 2014, reporting consolidated group revenue of EUR762.1 million (USD950 million), a decrease of 3.5% from EUR789.6 million in the year-ago period, mainly due to reduced activity from the low-margin hardware sales business. The mobile communications division accounted for EUR749.9 million of total sales in 3Q14, compared to EUR781.6 million a year earlier. Group EBITDA totalled EUR96.3 million for the three months ended 30 September 2014, up 4.0% from EUR92.6 million, while group net income rose by 4.1% year-on-year to EUR66.2 million.
freenet’s mobile customer base totalled 12.83 million at 30 September 2014 (down from 13.37 million twelve months earlier), of which 3.93 million were pre-paid customers, compared to 4.70 million in 3Q13, mainly due to the ongoing disconnection of inactive SIM cards by network operators. Around 5.97 million were contract users (up 2.6% from 5.82 million) and the remaining 2.93 million were ‘no-frills’ customers (primarily comprised of mobile contracts completed online in the discount market), up by around 80,000 from twelve months earlier.