Belgacom exceeds expectations

Friday, August 24th, 2007
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Very strong financial performance and accelerated customer growth for Belgacom TV and Proximus.

“¢ Year-over-year, Belgacom’s Net Income increased 30% to EUR 564 million.
“¢ End of June 2007, Belgacom had a Free Cash Flow of EUR 607 million compared to EUR -50 million a year ago.
“¢ Belgacom Group revenue increased slightly by 0.2% to EUR 3,039 million while the EBITDA decreased 2.8% to EUR 1,079 million.
“¢ Year-over-year, the revenues from Fixed Line Services increased by 0.5% over the first six months of 2007 with an EBITDA margin of 31.5%.
“¢ Belgacom added 51,683 new TV subscribers in the first half of 2007. Acquisition of Belgacom TV customers accelerated considerably in the second quarter of 2007, with 41,857 new customers. Belgacom exceeds expectations by bringing its total Belgacom TV customer base to 191,348 at the end of June.
“¢ Year-over-year, the Mobile Communications Services’ revenue decline was limited to 3.1% with an EBITDA margin of 46.5%. Excluding the impact of Mobile Termination Rate cuts, the revenue increased slightly by 0.2%.
“¢ Proximus achieved a very solid customer gain, adding 104,388 new active customers in the first half of 2007 of which 69,564 in the second quarter. This brings the total number of active customers to 4,415,824 at the end of June 2007.
“¢ International Carrier Services’ revenue increased 3.3% while Operating expenses were kept flat, resulting in nearly twice the EBITDA as for the same period of 2006.
“¢ Based upon the good set of results for the first half of 2007, and taking into account the expected challenges that lay ahead for the remaining of the year, Belgacom feels comfortable in upgrading its 2007 Full-Year guidance for its Fixed as well as for its Mobile business.

Belgacom TV added 51,683 new subscriptions during the first half of 2007 reaching a total of 191,348 customers at the end of June 2007. The second quarter (+41,857 customers) showed a clear positive effect of different service, content and pricing actions such as Comfort View (Pause TV, instant Rewinding, PVR), additional channels (MTV, Nickelodeon) in Classic+ offer and an extended video-on-demand offering. Especially the “Internet +TV” packs proved to be a successful volume driver, confirming Belgacom’s strong position on triple/quadruple play services.

More (pdf): The full press release; The half year report 2007; The half year results presentation