Danish telco TDC, the country’s leading operator in terms of subscribers, has published its financial report for the three months ended 30 September 2015, reporting a 4.5% year-on-year increase in revenue to DKK5.898 billion (USD870.55 million), up from DKK5.643 billion in Q3 2014. The company attributed the development to growth in Norway as a result of its acquisition of cableco Get, which was partly offset by the continued impact from regulation and negative exchange rate developments. Meanwhile, EBITDA marginally increased by 1.0% from DKK2.537 billion in 3Q14 to DKK2.512 billion in the twelve months to end-September 2015, while gross profit surged by 3.7% to DKK4.336 billion. Profit for the period however decreased by 27.0%, to DKK517 million, due to higher depreciation and amortisation costs following the acquisition of Get.
In operational terms, TDC reported just over three million mobile revenue generating units (RGUs) in its domestic market at end-September 2015, down from 3.042 million reported in Q3 2014, while broadband RGUs reached 1.267 million, down from 1.297 million at end-June 2014.
Pernille Erenbjerg, TDC’s new CEO, commented: ‘The Q3 financial results confirm the reported trends in H1 2015 and support the full-year guidance on all parameters. In Denmark we faced an unsatisfactory EBITDA decrease of 12% y-o-y with continued pressure in both B2B and B2C. However, both our Consumer and Business divisions reduced churn rates and consequently succeeded in increasing the mobile subscriber base by 13,000 versus Q2 2015. The key drivers in this context were a range of initiatives targeting bundled solutions as well as improved customer experience. That said, the competitive Danish mobile market, among the cheapest in Europe, is constricting earnings and challenging our strategic ambition to continue to invest in telecom infrastructure and launch innovative solutions. As fulfilment of this ambition requires improved profitability in our Danish activities, in mid-October we took an important step by increasing the lowest mobile price point for new customers.’