Ooredoo suffers 43% slump in net profit in Q1

Ooredoo announced that as of March 31, the group’s consolidated customer base stood at 111 million, up 14 per cent year-on-year. Group revenue for the first three months in 2015 remained stable at QAR 8.04 billion (US$2.21 billion), down a per cent year-on-year. Group EBITDA stood at QAR 3.21 billion, down five per cent, while the group’s EBITDA margin fell to 40 per cent, down from 42 per cent due to what Ooredoo described as the continued strategic investments across the business into broadband networks, customer acquisition and retention.

Net profit attributable to Ooredoo shareholders for Q115 was QAR 501 million, down a massive 43 per cent, impacted by adverse currency movements primarily due to the depreciation of the Algerian Dinar and the Indonesian Rupiah.

The company reported that its strategy to become a data-centric business continued to make progress during the period. Customer and data revenue growth were all driven by Ooredoo’s investment in its broadband networks, data infrastructure, driving smartphone penetration and creating innovative new bundles and data offers for customers.

Group data revenue increased to 30 per cent of group revenue. The growth in data revenue reflects the growing adoption of data-based services, enabled by the pervasiveness of Ooredoo’s ultra-fast broadband networks.

Ooredoo now has 4G deployed across five out of its nine markets, with Ooredoo Kuwait launching 4G+ in March 2015. Algeria, Iraq, Qatar, the Maldives and Tunisia are all markets where Ooredoo is the market leader in data. Ooredoo is also rolling out service agreements with OTT players to drive and capture a growing share of data revenue in its markets.