Telecom Italia Group, which trades in Italy and Brazil under the TIM brand, has reported a 4.6% year-on-year drop in revenues for the first quarter of 2019, to EUR4.47 billion (USD4.99 billion). Excluding the impact of one-off items, sales were down 2.9%. The domestic and wholesale unit saw a 4.2% decline in sales to EUR3.50 billion, while in Brazil revenues fell 5.2% to EUR979 million. The group said that results were impacted by wholesale subsidiary Sparkle’s decision to close contracts related to low-zero margin International Wholesale services.
Group EBITDA was stable at EUR1.79 billion. Reported profit stood at EUR165 million, down from EUR199 million a year earlier, although on a comparable basis – excluding the effects of the adoption of IFRS 16 accounting methods – profit would have been broadly similar at EUR193 million.
TIM Italy claimed 28.07 million active mobile subscriptions at the end of March 2019, including 18.58 million ‘human’ lines and 9.49 million M2M connections. Its domestic retail fixed broadband subscriber base fell 2.3% y-o-y to 7.35 million. TIM Brasil, meanwhile, had 55.08 million mobile customers at the end of March, down 4.9% from Q1 2018.