Uralsvyazinform doubles H1 earnings to 4 bln rubles
YEKATERINBURG. Aug 2 (Interfax) - Uralsvyazinform , the incumbent fixed line provider in the Urals region, doubled net profit to Russian Accounting Standards (RAS) to 3.977 billion rubles in H1 2010.
Sales revenue grew 6.1% year-on-year to 21.329 billion rubles, the telco said in a statement.
Uralsvyazinform financial highlights (mln rubles):
| H1 2010 | H1 2009 | |
| Sales revenue | 21 329 | 20 103,4 |
| Communications revenue | 20 776,4 | 19 532,6 |
| Expenses | 15 440 | 16 004,6 |
| EBITDA | 9 490,2 | 7 669,2 |
| EBITDA margin | 44.5% | 38.1% |
| Operating profit | 5 889 | 4 098,7 |
| Operating margin | 27.6% | 20.4% |
| Pretax profit | 5 133,8 | 2 523,9 |
| Net profit | 3 977,2 | 1 920,8 |
| Net margin | 18.6% | 9.6% |
Stringent cost-cutting enabled the company to reduce expenses 3.5%, the company said.
It said data transmission and Internet, mobile services and local telephony all helped to boost revenue. Data transmission and Internet revenue rose 12.6% to 3.525 billion rubles, with the number of broadband users increasing 32.2% to 811,100 and traffic rising 89% to 79.2 petabytes.
Cellular communications revenue grew 11.4% to 6.948 billion rubles and average monthly revenue per user (ARPU) grew 13.3% to 204 rubles thanks to efforts to optimize tariff policy in this segment.
Local telephony revenue grew 7% to 5.611 billion rubles.
Unregulated services (data transmission and Internet, cellular) accounted for 50.4% of overall revenue in H1 2010, up from 47.9% in H1 2009.
Loans outstanding fell 36.7% during H1 to 13.039 billion rubles, including long-term - 33% to 8.89 billion rubles and short-term debt - 43.5% to 4.147 billion rubles.
Uralsvyazinform operates in the Kurgan, Sverdlovsk, Tyumen and Chelyabinsk regions, Perm territory and Khanty-Mansiisk and Yamal-Nenets autonomous districts. As of June 30, 2010, it had 3.7 million fixed-line and 5.5 million mobile phone subscribers, 811,000 broadband and 122,000 paid TV subscribers.