STOCKHOLM, Sweden: Swedish telecom giant LM Ericsson today announced that its second quarter profits had surged by 16 percent. The group also said that these figures mean that its outlook for the remainder of the year was very positive.
Ericsson said that one of the main reasons for these massive profits was the fact that sales were on an upswing as the group saw strong sales in India and China. Both these regions are strong emerging markets and this was very evident as sales grew by 18 percent to 38.4 billion kronor ($4.92 billion). This was substantially more than the 32.6 billion kronor at the same time a year ago.
Total revenues for the second quarter stood at an impressive 5.8 billion kronor ($744 million) as compared to 5.0 billion kronor last year. The large advance booking by the US mobile network operator Cingular also helped sales. Sales were pushed strongly in Central Europe, the Middle East and Africa, with Nigeria and Turkey leading the way. There was a seven percent increase in sales in Western Europe, which the group described as highly satisfactory.
These figures would have pleased Chief executive Carl-Henric Svanberg who issued a statement saying, "The activity level in emerging markets is accelerating, which means more people have access to communication services. In parallel, operators seek new ways of working to meet the global trends of increased tariff competition and convergence of technologies and services." He said that the "robust performance" by the group has also meant that the forecast for the year has been revised to "moderate growth" in comparison to 2004.
Ericsson also said that there was 30 per cent penetration worldwide with almost 1.9 billion subscriptions worldwide.
Posted
on : Sat, 23 Jul 2005 08:05 GMT | Business News
By : Salim Patel
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