Telefonica reported an improvement in first-quarter results with revenues up 12.6 percent to EUR 11.543 billion. Organic growth of 3.3 percent was supported by better results in Brazil, the takeover of E-Plus in Germany and improving trends in Spain. The drop in sales in Spain slowed to 3.8 percent in the first quarter, while Germany grew by 2.9 percent, Brasil was up 4.3 percent and the rest of Latin American advanced 9.7 percent on an organic basis. Telefonica attributed the growth to investments in advanced services with higher ARPU, such as pay-TV, fibre and LTE. The company grew mobile data revenues 30.9 percent year-on-year, and data now accounts for over 40 percent of service revenues, thanks to a growing penetration of LTE customers and smartphones (38.3 percent of all mobile customers). LTE reached 11 percent of mobile data traffic and 6 percent of the customer base.
Telefonica's OIBDA rose 7.7 percent to EUR 3.618 billion,led by 14.5 percent organic growth in Latin America and a 9 percent pro forma increase in Germany. The OIBDA margin was still down 0.3 percent points to 31.3 percent. Net profit jumped to EUR 1.802 billion from EUR 688 million a year ago thanks to a valuation gain of EUR 1.185 billion on deferred tax assets at the O2 UK operations up for sale. Telefonica increased capital expenditure by 25.8 percent to EUR 1.682 billion, including EUR 161 million on spectrum acquisitions in Ecuador, Spain and Chile, and operating cash flow fell 4.2 percent to EUR 1.937 billion. Net debt was up by EUR 540 million from the end of 2014 to EUR 45.627 billion, equal to 2.73 times EBITDA for the past 12 months. Once the sale of O2 UK is completed, the leverage would drop to 2.13, Telefonica said.
The operator said it had entered a new cycle of organic growth as all businesses were gaining customers, sales and OIBDA, apart from Spain, which had at least returned to customer growth. Telefonica maintained its outlook for over 7 percent revenue growth this year, a drop of no more than 1 percent in the EBITDA margin and accelerating capex to around 17 percent of revenue.
Telefonica ended the quarter with 252.75 million mobile customers, up 12.9 percent year-on-year. The pay-TV base grew by 53.2 percent to 5.47 million, and fixed broadband customers increased by 0.8 percent to 17.70 million. The number of fibre customers more than doubled year-on-year to 2.06 million. Fixed telephony customers were down 3.1 percent from a year ago to 36.22 million.
