February 21 (SeeNews) - Telekom Romania's adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) fell 14.9% year-on-year in 2018 to 136.3 million euro ($154.5 million), its parent company, Greece's OTE, said on Thursday.
"The Group’s Romanian operations took decisive steps in the fourth quarter to return to healthy financial and operating conditions. Management believes that, following the significant one-off bad debt provisions charged in mobile operations during the year to account for billing issues following a change in systems, together with cost restructuring and capex initiatives underway, it is well positioned to stabilize its operations going forward," OTE said in its annual financial statement.
Telekom Romania's total revenues decreased 4% in 2018 to 933.2 million euro, reflecting the continuing pressure from retail fixed services.
Revenues from retail fixed services in Romania fell 14.3% to 246.9 million euro, while mobile service revenues decreased 3.9% to 321.6 million euro. Wholesale services revenues dropped as well in 2018, 7.4% to 111.8 million euro.
Telekom Romania mobile’s customer base totalled 4.6 million at the end of 2018, down 2.5% from the year-earlier level, following exclusion of inactive customers.Of the total customer base, 34% were postpaid.
In January, OTE Group told SeeNews it has not entered talks for the sale of its shareholding interest in Telekom Romania.
On January 16, OTE entered into an agreement to sell its entire stake in Telekom Albania to Bulgarian company Albania Telecom Invest for a total consideration of 50 million euro. The same day Bulgarian business news website capital.bg quoted Albania Telecom owner Spas Roussev as saying that negotiations regarding Telekom Romania sale were ongoing.
OTE is present in Romania since 2014 through Telekom. OTE's units in Romania - fixed-line operator RomTelecom and mobile operator Cosmote - were rebranded as Telekom Communications Romania and Telekom Mobile Romania, respectively, in September 2014.
Telekom Communications Romania is owned by OTE with 54% and by the Romanian communications ministry with 45.99%, while Telekom Mobile Romania is owned by OTE Group member Cosmote Mobile Communications with 69.9%, Telekom Romania Communications with 30% and minority shareholders.
($ = 0.8819 euro)