German telecoms group Deutsche Telekom (DT) has reported net revenue of EUR18.3 billion (USD21.2 billion) for the three months ended 30 September 2017, a rise of 0.8% from EUR18.1 billion in the year-ago quarter. The Bonn-based company said that EBITDA totalled EUR7.3 billion for the third quarter of 2017, up 37.2% from EUR5.3 billion twelve months previously, while adjusted EBITDA grew 3.3% year-on-year to EUR5.7 billion. Reported net profit (before adjustment for special factors) dropped from EUR1.1 billion in 3Q16 to EUR507 million twelve months later, although adjusted net profit rose by 19.6% to EUR1.2 billion over the same timeframe. As a result of the ‘strong growth’, DT has raised its full-year profit forecast for the second time this year; it now expects to post adjusted EBITDA of around EUR22.4 billion to EUR22.5 billion in 2017, revised from the EUR22.2 billion forecast at the start of the year. ‘This was made possible by our booming US business, our strong performance in Germany, and the positive trends in our European subsidiaries,’ noted CEO Tim Hottges.
DT’s German businesses generated revenue of EUR5.5 billion in the third quarter of 2017, stable compared to 3Q16, while adjusted EBITDA rose 4.5% y-o-y to EUR2.2 billion. At 30 September 2017 the firm’s German wireless subscriber base stood at 42.5 million (an increase of 2.6% from 41.5 million a year earlier), with fixed broadband connections rising 2.1% y-o-y to 13.1 million (of which 5.4 million were fibre-based – VDSL, vectoring and FTTH lines, up by 40.4%) and pay-TV accesses growing 9.6% to 3.1 million.
Internationally, T-Mobile US reported a 2.2% y-o-y rise in turnover to EUR8.5 billion, thanks to rapid customer growth which saw the cellco add more than a million new customers in each of the last 18 quarters. The unit ended September 2017 with 70.7 million mobile subscribers, an increase of 2.0% from 69.4 million a year earlier, as the number of branded post-paid and branded pre-paid customers rose by 11.3% and 6.5% respectively. In contrast, total mobile customers across DT’s European operations declined by 0.6% from 48.5 million at the end of Q3 2016 to 48.2 million a year later, although retail broadband lines and TV customers grew 3.8% to 5.6 million and 4.7% to 4.2 million, respectively. Revenue in the Europe segment rose by 1.5% y-o-y to EUR2.9 billion in Q3 2017 and adjusted EBITDA dropped 3.2% to EUR1.0 billion.