Telecom Lead Europe: Telecom Italia says its Capex (capital expenditure on telecom infrastructure) has decreased by €899 million to €5.196 billion in FY 2012.
Out of €5.196 billion, €3.072 billion was invested in Italy, its domestic business unit. In Italy, its Capex increased by €324 million compared with 2011.
The domestic business unit reported a decline of €1.113 billion in 2012. Excluding FY 2011 investments in purchasing the rights to use LTE mobile telephony frequency bands (€1.223 billion) there is a €110 million increase attributable in particular to the development of next generation networks (LTE and fiber).
Telecom Italia’s Brazil business unit reported an increase of €210 million (including a negative forex effect of €94 million), for the purchase of rights to use 4G mobile telephony frequency bands (€145 million) as well as investments to improve the quality of the network infrastructure.
Telecom Italia’s Argentina Business Unit reported Capex in line with the previous year. Its capital expenditure was aimed at enlarging and upgrading broadband services to improve transmission capacity and increase access speed, fixed-line access to meet demand and backhauling to support mobile access growth.
For 2013, Telecom Italia did not share specific guidance on Capex. As per its 2013-2015 plan, Telecom Italia will invest heavily in next generation networks.
The company, while announcing the financial performance, said its Telecom Personal also invested primarily in increased capacity and enlargement of the 3G network to support mobile Internet growth.
Telecom Italia Group’s full year revenue decreased 1.5 percent to €29.503 billion from €29.957 billion in 2011.
The decrease of €454 million is primarily due to the domestic business unit, offset by improvements enjoyed by the Argentina Business Unit (+€564 million) and the Brazil Business Unit (+€134 million).
Its EBITDA declined 2 percent to €11.645 billion.
Telecom Italia’s net loss in 2012 decreased substantially to €1.6 billion from a net loss of €4.8 billion in 2011. The loss is attributable in particular to goodwill write-downs for over €4 billion.
The company says the write-down of goodwill created following the Olivetti/Telecom Italia deals and the purchase of the TIM minorities was made necessary by the persisting recessionary tensions and the challenging global macroeconomic climate.
Telecom Italia’s domestic business
Domestic revenues were €17.884 million, down 5.8 percent from €18.991 million in 2011.
Telecom Italia’s Brazil business
Revenues of Tim Brasil Group in FY 2012 came to 18.764 billion reais, up 9.8 percent from 2011. Revenues from services grew to reach 16.420 billion reais, up from 15.353 billion reais in 2011 (+6.9 percent). Revenues from product sales rose from 1.733 billion reais in 2011 to 2.344 billion reais in 2012 (+35.3 percent), reflecting the company’s strategy of market penetration with high-end handsets (smartphones/webphones and tablets) as a lever to grow mobile data services.
Mobile ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) stood at 19.1 reais in FY 2012 compared with 21.4 reais in FY 2011 (-10.7 percent). The total number of lines at 31 December 2012 was 70.4 million, 9.8 percent higher than on 31 December 2011, representing a 26.9 percent market share.
Telecom Italia’s Argentina business
2012 revenues reached 22.116 billion pesos, up 3.620 billion pesos (+19.6 percent) compared with 2011 (18.496 billion pesos) thanks to growth of the broadband and mobile client bases, as well as ARPU.
The main revenue source for the Argentina Business Unit is mobile telephony which grew by more than 22 percent on the previous year and delivers 73 percent of the BU’s consolidated revenues.
Telecom Italia S.p.A.
Revenues in 2012 touched €16.940 billion, down €1,105 million (-6.1 percent) from 2011. This is due to the physiological decline in revenues from traditional business in the consumer (-3.6 percent), business (-9.4 percent), top (-12.4 percent) and national wholesale (-2,4 percent) segments. However, positive trends were seen in handset sales and revenues from fixed broadband and mobile services in the consumer segment.
