There are a handful of European results out this week, with British Telecom coming out the day after Faultline Online Reporter last went to press, and this week results from Vodafone, KPN, TalkTalk, Com Hem in Sweden and DNA Oy in Finland.
The days of thinking of Vodafone as the largest mobile only company are gone. In the last 12 months, to December 31, Vodafone added over 1 million broadband lines, and that’s after taking out the 143,000 it had last year in the Netherlands, which it sold because of its joint venture there.
Mobile is of course Vodafone’s primary reason for existence, and even after selling of its share of Verizon, and rolling up Netherlands into a subsidiary, it still has over 465 million cellphone customers. But throughout Europe, where most of the fixed broadband adds happened, Vodafone lost almost 1 million mobile clients not counting those in the Netherlands. Most of its almost 5 million handset client gains came in India and South Africa, although Indian revenues actually fell, on more customers.
Its mobile service revenue it tries to tell us increased 0.7% in Europe, but then when you read the fine print this takes into account currency fluctuations, which means that because Vodafone reports in British pounds, which have fallen dramatically since the Brexit vote, service revenues are down, but Vodafone is not saying by how much in constant currency terms – we reckon about 4.0% if the total group revenue is anything to go by, down to £13,687 million in the quarter from £14,247 million for this time last year.
In Europe, broadband lines reached 13 million, if you include Africa, Middle East and Asia Pacific, it was closer to 14.3 million fixed broadband lines. The big gainers in Europe were Italy and Spain, where Vodafone is investing in fiber. Vodafone confirmed its guidance for the year since this was only Q3 in its financial year. Vodafone is no longer breaking out its TV customers in detail, but it said that it now has 9.7 million TV customers which is a rise on the quarter of 104,000.
British Telecom’s fiscal Q3 results were overshadowed by a scandal at its Italian subsidiary, where past losses were hidden by local staff. Adjustments which related to the investigation amounted to £268 million for prior year errors, and a separate specific item charge of £245 million for changes in accounting estimates. BT had revenues of £6.13 billion ($7.75 billion) a rise of some 4.5%, with a comparable profit to last year, down a fraction. BT added 52,000 TV customers, taking it to 1.74 million, and 83,000 broadband lines, taking it to 9.3 million lines, but if you add in EE lines it is closer to 10.3 million.
KPN came out with its Q4 figures, down only 2.9% to 1.72 billion, and €6.81 billion for the year, adding 18,000 IPTV customers to reach 2.32 million, and adding just 2,000 broadband homes, taking that to 2.87 million, more or less treading water. Local rival Liberty Global numbers are not out for another ten days or so.
Com Hem in Sweden was up 13,000 broadband lines at its core business, taking that over 700,000 for the first time, to 702,000 up by and 4,000 TV customers to 644,000. However, in its Boxer paid digital terrestrial business, recently acquired, its TV subscribers fell 13,000 to 495,000 in the quarter. Revenues were up 40% to about $203 million. The company said the Boxer integration was going according to plan.
At DNA Oy in Finland, the cable company recorded 2016 revenue of €859 million ($924 million) profit up 10% year on year, with 2.7 million mobile subscriptions, and TV subscriptions of 303,000, up 31,000 and with broadband up just 2,000 since last quarter to 440,000.