United Internet Q1 sales reach ‘new record’ of EUR905m

United Internet, a provider of broadband and telephony services in Germany under the brand 1&1, has reported that consolidated sales reached a ‘new record’ of EUR905.1 million (USD1.03 billion) in the first three months of 2015, representing an increase of 27.5% from EUR709.9 million in the year-ago period. EBITDA totalled EUR173.5 million in Q1 2015, up 54.8% year-on-year, while EBIT climbed 32.8% from EUR89.7 million in the first quarter of 2014 to EUR119.1 million a year later. Growth was driven by the full consolidation of fixed line operator Versatel as of 1 October 2014, as well as an increase in customer numbers. The ‘Access’ segment saw sales increase 37.8% from EUR477.2 billion in 1Q14 to EUR657.6 billion twelve months later (including EUR132.1 million from the Versatel acquisition), with the number of fee-based customer contracts rising from 5.72 million to 7.01 million over the same period. DSL customers on ‘complete’ (ULL) packages totalled 3.95 million at 31 March 2015 (up from 3.27 million a year earlier), while 2.78 million were mobile internet users (2.09 million) and the remaining 280,000 were T-DSL/R-DSL subscribers (down from 360,000).