LONDON: Britain's mobile phones group O2 Plc. justified the 17.7-billion-pound takeover offer by Spanish telco Telefonica, reporting a 15 per cent increase in its first half profits at 357 million pounds. The company said its customer base too went up to more than 25 million.
O2, which Telefonica is taking over at the end of November, had increased profits and revenues in all its operating locations, including Germany and the U.K. O2's chief executive Peter Erskine said: despite intense competition in all its markets, the company could have a 17 per cent growth in the customer base to reach 25.7 million, 12 per cent growth in revenues, 15 per cent growth in pre-tax earnings before exceptionals and 16 per cent growth in operating profit.
The company will pay an interim dividend of 1.54 pence a share.
In the U.K, its customer base went up by 8.9 per cent, or 702,000 in the first half to 15.09 million customers and pre-tax profits by 2.9 per cent to 598 million pounds. In Germany, pre-tax and exceptionals earnings increased by a phenomenal 51 per cent to 246 million pounds and the customer base by 34 per cent to 8.95 million.
The group had a turnover of 3.6 billion pounds during the period.
One aberration is this strong results is that its average revenue per user in the U.K remained flat at 271 pounds during the three months ended September, while went down by seven euros in Germany.
O2 subsidiary Airwave got a contract to supply a secure communications service to the English Ambulance Trusts with 390 million in revenue over 13 years.
Riding at the crust of strong results, the company clarified it has not received any other takeover offers than that of Telefonica. There was speculation that German telco major Deutsche Telekom may enter the field in order to fortify its U.K. mobile business T-Mobile UK, but the company ruled out any such attempts.
Posted
on : Mon, 14 Nov 2005 16:40 GMT | Business News
By : Chris Rowe
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