Oman Telecommunications Company (Omantel), the Sultanate’s incumbent telecoms operator, has announced its preliminary unaudited results for the financial year ended 31 December 2015, reporting revenue of OMR514.5 million (USD1.3 billion), an increase of 6.9% from OMR481.2 million the previous year. The firm said that growth was mainly driven by its domestic operations and its wholesale business. EBITDA rose by 4.5% year-on-year to OMR254.0 million, although net profit slumped 59.0% from OMR122.4 million in 2014 to OMR50.2 million twelve months later, impacted by the impairment of investment in Pakistani subsidiary Worldcall (WTL) and a Voluntary End of Service (VEoS) programme covering 266 employees. If these exceptional items are excluded, Omantel said that the group net profit would have been OMR118.2 million.
The total domestic subscriber base (including the fixed and wireless businesses, but excluding resellers) stood at 3.384 million as of 31 December 2015, up by 1.3% from 3.341 million twelve months earlier. Omantel attributed the growth to rising demand for broadband services, with the number of fixed and mobile broadband subscribers increasing by 33% and 10%, respectively.