Spain’s Telefónica enjoyed a solid first half of this year in its domestic market, gaining almost an additional 45,000 pay-TV subscribers, bringing the total number to around 748,000. This contrasted with a loss in the same period in 2009 and was equivalent to a year-on-year increase of 22.7%, giving the company a market share of 18%.
At the same time, Telefónica ended June with 5.6 million wireline broadband accesses, giving it a market share of over 54%. Double and triple play customers also accounted for nearly 90% of the company’s retail broadband internet accesses in mid-year.
In terms of revenues, the €5,687 million Telefónica has posted for the first half for its Spanish wireline business was 6% down year-on-year, which was an improvement on the 7.7% year-on-year reduction in the first quarter.
In the general scheme of things, data just published by the Spanish regulator CMT for Q1 rather than H1 give Telefónica a 17.8% share of a domestic pay-TV market numbering just over 4.1 million subscribers. This put it in third place behind Sogecable (43.8%) and ONO (23.6%) and also some distance in revenue terms behind Sogecable, which accounted for two-thirds (almost 67%) of the total.
Telefónica has extensive interests outside Spain, both in Latin America and Europe. Its total pay-TV subscriber base worldwide stood at 2.7 million at the end of June, equivalent to an 8% increase year-on-year in organic terms, with a reported figure of +10.4%.
Within Europe, Telefónica’s main pay-TV operation O2 TV is located in the Czech Republic. Launched in September 2006, this quickly developed into one of the most successful IPTV services in the CEE region but has since stalled. Indeed, the 133,000 subscribers it had at the end of June marked an increase of only 0.4% on the same period last year. Its operator, the incumbent telco Telefónica O2 Czech Republic, could nevertheless point to a 10.8% increase in its ADSL accesses, to 702,000, over the same period.
However, the telco’s overall financial performance in the first half of the year left much to be desired. Its consolidated business revenues in H1 were 6.6% down year-on-year at CZK12,273 million (€492.7 million), while OIBDA fell by 18.1% to CZK11,209 million. Its consolidated net income was meanwhile 23.9% lower at CZK4,354 million.
Globally, though, it was an altogether different picture for Telefónica. Its consolidated revenues rose 5.4% year-on-year to €29,053 million, with growth strong in both Europe (10.8%) and Latin America (10.2%). Its net profit amounted to €3,775 million in H1, which was a 9.4% increase year-on-year, with growth being even higher (+16%) in the second quarter.
Telefónica’s future results are likely to be positively impacted by last week’s purchase of a 50% stake of Brasilcel from Portugal Telecom. The deal, worth €7.5 billion, has given Telefónica sole control of what is the leading player in Brazil’s telecom market.
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