Mobily reduced its net losses for the first nine months of 2018 by 61.5 percent. The telecom company cut its net losses in this period to SR202.9 million ($54 million) from SR527.2 million in the same period last year.
Revenues increased by 2.1 percent to SR8,703 million compared to SR8,524 million in the same period last year.
This has been achieved despite the market, regulatory and economic challenges, including:
(1) The reduction of mobile termination rates.
(2) The continuous impact of the VoIP application on international calls revenue.
Taking out the impact of the decrease of mobile interconnection rates, revenues would have grown by 2.7 percent.
The gross profit increased by 4.5 percent to SR5,196 million for the first nine months of 2018 versus SR4,970 million in the same period of 2017. This is mainly due to the reduction of cost of sales as a result of mobile termination rates.
The company successfully improved its earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) to reach SR3,190 million compared to SR2,734 million for 2017, resulting in an increase of 17 percent. This is due to the company’s efficiency in managing its expenses, the reversal of certain provisions, and the implementation of IFRS 15 and 9. The EBITDA margin for the nine months reached 36.6 percent versus 32.1 percent for 2017.
Mobily’s Q3 2018 net losses reached SR30.9 million compared to SR174.4 million in Q3 2017, a decrease of 82 percent.
Mobily’s Q3 2018 revenues amounted to SR2,976 million versus SR2,805.7 million for Q3 2017, reflecting an increase of 6.1 percent.
This is mainly due to the improvement in consumer revenues, growth in FTTH sales and growth in business unit revenues driven by sales to government sectors.
“This was achieved despite the market, regulatory and economic challenges including the reduction of mobile termination rates. By taking out the impact of the decrease of the mobile termination rates, quarterly revenues would have grown by 8 percent,” the company said.
Mobily succeeded in improving its EBITDA to reach SR1,088 million in Q3 2018 versus SR904 million in Q3 2017, an increase of 20 percent. This reflects the company’s efficiency in managing its operational expenses and the reclassification of SR84 million provision (built in Q1) from pre-EBITDA to post-EBITDA.
This reclassification did not affect the calculated net losses.
EBITDA margin reached 36.6 percent for Q3 2018 versus 32.2 percent for the same quarter last year.
