Nawras Announces Preliminary Unaudited
Financial Results for 2013
Customer numbers up 9.3% and revenues 4.4%
Muscat, Oman, 29 January 2014: Omani Qatari Telecommunications Company SAOG (“Nawras”) today announced preliminary unaudited financial results for the year ended 31 December 2013.
Financial Highlights:
Three months performance comparison | Full year performance comparison | ||||||
2013 | 2012 | Growth | 2013 | 2012 | Growth | ||
Revenues (OMR m) | 52.8 | 51.4 | 2.7% | 202.0 | 193.5 | 4.4% | |
EBITDA (OMR m) | 27.4 | 26.2 | 4.6% | 98.9 | 94.9 | 4.2% | |
Net Profit (OMR m) | 10.0 | 10.3 | -2.9% | 33.1 | 37.0 | -10.5% | |
Mobile & Fixed Customers | 2,396,826 | 2,193,029 | 9.3% | ||||
Operational Highlights:
· Revenue increased by 2.7% in Q4 2013 to OMR 52.8 million, for the fourth quarter, from OMR 51.4 million for the same period last year.
Full year revenue increased by 4.4% to OMR 202.0 million compared with OMR 193.5 million in 2012. The increase in revenue is driven by growth in mobile and fixed data revenues, offset partially by decline in SMS.
· EBITDA achieved in Q4 2013 was OMR 27.4 million compared to OMR 26.2 million in the same period last year, an increase of 4.6%.
2013 EBITDA increased by 4.2% to OMR 98.9 million compared with OMR 94.9 million in 2012. Improvement in EBITDA for 2013 was driven by revenue growth and lower cost of sales partially offset by higher Opex.
· Net profit for the fourth quarter was OMR 10.0 million compared with OMR 10.3 million for the same quarter in 2012, slight decline of 2.9%.
Total net profit achieved for year 2013 was OMR 33.1 million compared to OMR 37.0 million in 2012, a decline of 10.5%. Despite higher EBITDA, net profit was affected by higher depreciation due to the investment in network modernisation and expansion.
· Total customers grew by 9.3% or 203,797 to 2,396,826 by end of 2013 compared to 2,193,029 for year 2012.
· The fixed service customer base grew by over 45% to 64,287 in 2013 compared to 44,261 at the end of 2012. The mobile post-paid customer base expanded by 4.3% to 186,917 compared with 179,182 customers in 2012. The mobile pre-paid customer base increased by 8.9% from 1,969,586 in 2012 to 2,145,622 in 2013.
Commenting on the results Sayyid Amjad Al Busaidi, Chairman of Nawras said:
“During 2013, Nawras has successfully continued to make big performance achievements despite the highly competitive market environment. A number of global companies are already retaining Nawras to meet their sophisticated data and telecommunications needs, a trend that we expect to grow in the years ahead as more companies are attracted to Oman on account of its political stability, geographical position and robust economy.
On behalf of the Board of Directors, I offer my gratitude to our shareholders, customers and partners for their support during the year. The company’s achievements would not be possible without these collaborative partnerships, which capitalise on market opportunities through a shared desire for success.”
Also commenting CEO, Greg Young
“We have been successful in increasing our revenues and total number of customers. This achievement, supported by our significant investment in upgrading our network which demonstrates our investment strategies are sound and returning results. We will continue to future-proof the Nawras network, adding additional sites and Turbocharging existing base stations to provide a second-to-none customer experience across the country, this will continue in 2014 to all main cities of Oman.
In addition, we expanded our countrywide installation of fibre cable with the completion of a major fibre link in Dhofar Governorate, giving us a future-proof backbone network with substantial additional capacity for new data services. 2013 also witnessed the launch of state-of-the-art Network Operation Centre in Bausher. The new Nawras NOC controls the nationwide network from Musandam to Salalah. The NOC control spans all sites and technologies, mobile and fixed, 2G, 3G, 4G, WiMAX and FTTX. Every single piece of technology in each site is controlled from the NOC.Out of this building we monitor the quality of our services and we can now identify potential issues even before a customer faces a problem.”
The Nawras Board of Directors will meet on the 19 February 2014 to review and approve 2013 audited financials.
