Consolidated revenues for the mobilkom austria group rose by 4.2 percent compared to the first half of 2004 to EUR 1.062 billion. All companies within the mobilkom austria group - mobilkom austria, VIPnet (Croatia), Si.mobil (Slovenia), and mobilkom liechtenstein - were able to achieve continued customer growth as well as improved revenues, EBITDA and EBIT in each country during the first half of 2005, and that despite increasingly difficult market conditions. The international subsidiaries of mobilkom austria now contribute over 22 percent to the group revenues. EBITDA rose by 6.7 percent to EUR 415.0 million compared to the same period in the previous year. The 12.3 percent improvement of EBIT to EUR 238.0 million was achieved above all through increased revenues, as well as one-time effects from divestiture of assets. The number of mobilkom austria group customers increased in the first half of 2005 by 4.7 percent to 5,002,300.
Mobilkom austria was able to maintain its high-level position and increase its customer base by roughly 127,00, which equals 4 percent, to 3.3 million customers. The company was able to increase its revenues by 2.2 percent compared to H1 2004 to EUR 835.5 million. EBITDA rose by 0.8 percent to EUR 317.5 million. Through the higher EBITDA and maintained level of depreciations, mobilkom austria achieved an increase in EBIT of 1.3 percent to EUR 190.9 million. The data share of voice and data packet revenues rose by 4.6 percentage points over that of the previous year, to 16.6 percent. Data ARPU also rose compared to the first half of 2004 by 35.5 percent, as a result of which overall ARPU with EUR 36.1 remained steady during the first half of the year. This is due to increased use of data services as well as higher penetration for GPRS, EDGE and UMTS handsets.
