OTE's Romtelecom loses more fixed telephony customers but grows on TV and broadband in Romania

Romanian telecom company Romtelecom, majority owned by Greek OTE, lowered its revenues by 11.8 percent in the third quarter of this year, to EUR 160 million, according to the company's most recent financial report. Its nine-month revenues also went down by 9.9 percent, to EUR 429 million.

The company managed to reduce its operating loss, diminishing it by 39 percent, to EUR 31.7 million after nine months. Its EBIT in the third quarter was negative – a loss of EUR 3 million, compared to a loss of EUR 13.9 million in the third quarter of 2010. “This decline, however, partly reflects a change in revenue-recognition policies related to accrued revenues reversal as well as a switch in commercial policy regarding customer-premise equipment,” writes OTE's report. Romtelecom further saw its voice telephony line customer base down, to 2.5 million, from 2.6 million at the end of September last year. However, it posted growth on the broadband and TV subscribers fronts – 16.8 percent and 20.4 percent respectively. “RomTelecom partly offset the decline in voice telephony through ongoing rebalancing of its revenue mix. Compared to Q3’10, the total number of broadband customers rose by 17 percent, while the number of TV subscribers increased by 20 percent, largely reflecting subscriber acquisitions. Consequently, as a percentage of total Romtelecom voice clients, broadband penetration rose to 44 percent and television service penetration to 48 percent,” according to OTE. Get the full report from OTE here. Corina Saceanu, corina@romania-insider.com