Telecom Italia (TIM) reported a 1.3 percent year-on-year rise in revenues to EUR 4.91 billion in the third quarter, up from EUR 4.84 billion a year earlier, fuelled by continuous high demand for high-speed mobile and fixed services and the ongoing recovery at its TIM Brasil unit. However, the results were slightly below expectations in view of annual revenue rises of 6.4 percent and 8.5 percent in the previous two quarters. In September, Vivendi’s chief convergence officer Amos Genish replaced Flavio Cattaneo as CEO in a further sign of the French media giant’s influence over the company.
TIM’s EBITDA for the quarter was down 2.5 percent on reported terms to EUR 2.10 billion, hit by non-recurring restructuring and litigation charges, with the company’s EBITDA margin declining 1.6 percentage points to 42.8 percent. The group’s adjusted net debt came to EUR 26.23 billion at the end of Q3, some EUR 1.1 billion higher than at the end of December 2016, attributed to EUR 630 million in payments made by TIM to renew mobile frequency rights and a EUR 257 million payment by the Brazilian unit to the consortium charged with the 700MHz spectrum clean-up.
Overall investments during the first nine months of 2017 reached EUR 3.88 billion, up 21.6 percent year on year, mainly driven by 46 percent increase in investment in fibre and LTE infrastructure, as well as the licence renewals.
In its domestic market, Telecom Italia released 9-month figures showing revenues up 2.5 percent year-on-year to EUR 11.32 billion, with the company’s recent upward trend slowing somewhat in the third quarter due to the introduction of new EU roaming rules in mid-June. However, the company’s mobile base grew 330,000 year-on-year to reach 30.6 percent of the domestic market while fibre customers surged by 889,000 to bring retail accesses to 1.7 million and the total number of accesses to 2.5 million.
