Telefonica reports increased profit despite weak European, Latin American segments

Despite facing multiple challenges in both its Latin America and Europe operations, Telefonica is inking constant success and has reported an increase for the first quarter of 2013.

Telefonica’s executive chairman Cesar Alierta, in a statement, said that the company is generating outcome that reflects “a progressive stabilization of the business and a greater degree of diversification”, adding its financial position is persistently improving.

During the first quarter of this year, Spain’s biggest company announced the net income of €902 million which was 20.6% up from €748 million it generated last year.

The revenue fell 8.8% to €14.14 billion, with the sales in its key Latin American market, which accounts for more than half of the group’s revenues, dropping 4%. The revenue from the European market was down by 11%.

Brazil emerged as company’s biggest market for the first time, surpassing its home market Spain, where the sales declined 9.5% to €3.26 billion. Latin America delivered more than 50% of consolidated revenue to the company for second successive quarter, largely due to company’s downfall in Europe.

The company reported an operating income of €1.08 billion from Latin America, where it has 176.98 million mobile subscribers, and this number is increasing 3.6% annually.

The €1.08 billion operating income was 17.7% less than from €1.31 billion and the revenue of €7.23 billion was down 3.8% from €7.52 billion. The company described the impact of exclusion of Atento, the call-center unit sold last year, and February’s depreciation of the bolivar in Venezuela as main reasons behind recession.

From Europe, where it has 70.33 million mobile subscribers, the company reported an operating income of €1.13 billion, down 10.2% from €1.26 billion. The revenue of €7.56 billion slumped to €6.68 billion after witnessing decline of 11.7%.

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