Germany’s Deutsche Telekom (DT) has posted net revenue of EUR18.6 billion (USD20.2 billion) for the three months ended 31 March 2017, an increase of 5.8% from EUR17.6 billion in the year-ago quarter. The rise was mainly driven by T-Mobile US, which reported a 14.9% year-on-year jump in turnover to EUR8.9 billion, thanks to rapid customer growth which saw the cellco add more than a million new customers in each of the last 16 quarters. As a result, international revenues accounted for 67.3% of DT’s total in Q1 2017, compared to 65.5% the previous year. The Bonn-based telco posted group EBITDA of EUR5.9 billion for the quarter, down 22.2% from EUR7.7 billion in the first three months of 2016, although adjusted EBITDA grew 7.5% over the same timeframe to EUR5.6 billion. As expected, reported net profit (including special factors) plummeted 76.1% over the twelve-month period from EUR3.1 billion to EUR747 million, as the prior-year figure included a gain of EUR2.5 billion from the sale of shares in EE in the UK to BT Group. Adjusted net profit, meanwhile, declined by 10.3% y-o-y to EUR939 million, mainly due to expenses incurred in restructuring the financing of T-Mobile US in 1Q17.
In its domestic market, DT generated total revenue of EUR5.4 billion in the first three months of 2017, stable compared to the year-ago period, while adjusted EBITDA grew 0.9% to EUR2.1 billion. The firm’s German mobile subscriber base reached 42.1 million at 31 March 2017 (an increase of 3.6% from 40.6 million a year earlier), of which 25.3 million were post-paid customers (up 5.6%). Domestic fixed broadband lines grew 2.2% y-o-y to 12.9 million (of which 4.7 million were fibre-based – VDSL, vectoring and FTTH – lines, up by 42.8%) and pay-TV accesses rose 8.0% to 2.9 million, while fixed network lines continued to slide, falling from 20.1 million at the end of March 2016 to 19.6 million twelve months later.
T-Mobile US ended Q1 2017 with 72.6 million mobile subscribers, an increase of 10.8% from 65.5 million a year earlier, as the number of branded post-paid customers rose 8.0% y-o-y to 35.3 million. In contrast, total mobile customers across DT’s European operations declined by 2.5% to 47.3 million (including 24.5 million contract users, up by 3.2%), although retail broadband lines and TV customers grew by 3.6% to 5.4 million and 4.5% to 4.1 million, respectively. Revenue in the Europe segment was relatively flat at EUR2.8 billion in 1Q17 and adjusted EBITDA dropped 4.5% to EUR889 million.