Qatar’s Ooredoo Group posted a 3% year-on-year drop in total revenue to QAR21.965 billion (USD5.984 billion) for the first nine months of 2019, although its 9M19 net profit increased by 16% to QAR1.265 billion, while EBITDA for January-September 2019 improved by 4% to QAR9.664 billion. The multinational group’s consolidated customer base stood at 116 million at 30 September 2019, down from 120 million twelve months earlier but up by around one million from Q2 2019, mainly driven by mobile subscriber take-up in Indonesia (Indosat Ooredoo) and Iraq (Asiacell).
Domestically, Ooredoo Qatar’s 9M 2019 revenue dropped to QAR5.4 billion (9M 2018: QAR5.8 billion) impacted by lower handset sales. Qatari 9M EBITDA was QAR3.0 billion, an increase of 2% year-on-year, enabled by an increasing focus on digitisation and cost optimisation measures, including renegotiating major content deals. Qatari customer numbers stood at 3.2 million at end-September.