TDC president and CEO Carsten Dilling said the Danish incumbent's second-quarter earnings were in line with expectations and that the operator is standing by its full-year guidance, despite a 59.3 per cent drop in profit compared to the same period in 2014.
The operator's earnings fell to DKK570 million (€76.3 million/$83.4 million) in the second quarter of 2015, despite a 6.4 per cent year-on-year increase in revenue to DKK6 billion and a 2.5 per cent rise in EBITDA to DKK2.4 billion.
Figures for the six months to end-June showed similar trends. Profit fell 48.9 per cent year-on-year to DKK1 billion, while revenue grew 6.8 per cent to DKK12.1 billion and EBITDA by 1.7 per cent to DKK4.8 billion.
Dilling said the operator remained "committed to delivering on our full-year guidance on all parameters," and would pay "an interim dividend of DKK1.00 per share" on Aug. 12.
The president and CEO drew comfort from an increase in customer satisfaction in the recent quarter, which he said was evidence that a revamp of TDC's customer service operations was paying off. The operator also stemmed losses in its mobile subscriber base by adding 13,000 users in the second quarter.
However, ARPU fell by 5 per cent year-on-year due to "migration to lower price points and cross selling," Dilling said.
TDC's second-quarter earnings were also hit by a "fierce pricing environment in the Danish B2B market", in particular the loss of a key public WAN contract, Dilling said. On the flip side, the company's businesses "outside Denmark delivered strong results and constituted 25 per cent of total TDC Group revenue" during the quarter.
The operator predicted full year 2015 EBIDTA would match, or be slightly higher than, the DKK9.8 billion generated in 2014, while organic revenue development would be on-par with 2014 when the figure declined 2.5 per cent year-on-year.
For more:
- see TDC's earnings statement (PDF)
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