Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Company (EITC) announced on Thursday a first-quarter net profit jump of 21 per cent to Dh311 million.
Revenues grew by 8.5 per cent to Dh3.1 billion on sustained demand for broadband and mobile services. Ebitda grew by 13.3 per cent to Dh1.3 billion on higher service revenues while operating free cash flow (Ebitda – Capex) grew 75 per cent to Dh964 million thanks to higher Ebitda and Capex spending which is beginning to normalize.
The telecom major recorded a 10.4 per cent growth in mobile customers to 7.5 million subscribers across the post-paid and prepaid segments.
EITC delivered a third consecutive quarter of net additions on the post-paid segment which grew to 1.4 million customers. The prepaid customer base increased to 6.1 million thanks to targeted offers, brisk tourism activity, and continued improvement in the economic environment.
Consumer broadband attracted 48,000 new customers (Q1’21: 13,000) and ended the quarter with 439,000 broadband customers. This represents a 76.7 per cent increase year-over-year. Again, our commercial initiatives across various product categories and the disciplined execution of our broadband strategy helped drive another quarter of solid performance, the telecom firm said.
Fahad Al Hassawi, EITC’s CEO, said the first-quarter results confirm that the company’s recovery trajectory is on a sustainable path. The Covid-19 impact is phasing out.
“We continued to experience increased mobility and a general improvement in the economic environment. We also continued our efforts to deploy our innovative portfolio of products and services and to implement the transformation of the Company. Our considerable infrastructure investment allows us to continue innovating and improve customer experience. More importantly, it sets the foundations for continued strong performance.”
He said the first-quarter performance validates the company’s strategy.
“We are committed to re-invigorating our core mobile and fixed operations while pursuing modernisation of our infrastructure. We will continue to work to maintain this positive commercial momentum throughout 2022.”
— issacjohn@khaleejtimes.com
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