Telekom Austria saw impressive growth in its pay-TV business in all but one of its markets in the third quarter, with Slovenia the star performer.
In Slovenia, the company ended Q3 with 55,400 pay-TV RGUs, or 12.2% more than in the same period last year.
Elsewhere, the number of pay-TV RGUs increased by 1.2% to 477,400 in Bulgaria; 4.8% to 210,100 in Croatia; and 4.3% to 290,700 in its home market Austria.
In Belarus, where Telekom Austria is a newcomer to the pay-TV sector, the number of pay-TV RGUs at the end of Q3 stood at 248,100, while in Macedonia the total fell by 1.7% to 121,500.
In its latest set of results, the company notes that its revenues in Q3 amounted to €1,110.7 million, or 3.5% more than in the corresponding period in 2016. EBITDA was €410.1 million (-1.3%) and the net result €148.1 million (+3.4%).
Commenting on the results, Alejandro Plater, CEO Telekom Austria Group, said: “We are continuing our revenue growth strategy, group total revenues rose by 3.5% on a reported basis in the third quarter, and we see operational improvement in almost all our markets. These developments are reflected in an increase of free cash flow. In addition to that we have been setting the course for the future: in this quarter our subsidiary A1 Digital acquired a majority stake in the Swiss cloud provider Exoscale and is now able to offer cloud-based services over this platform. A local branch was also opened in Munich/Germany. This strengthens A1 Digital as a strong regional player operating under EU law. In order to boost our brand profile and have one strong unified market presence we decided to harmonise our brands within the Group and to roll out ‘A1’ in a gradual manner. Given all these developments, our expectation of growth in Group revenues in the year 2017 is increased to approximately 3% on a reported basis.”
