CK Hutchison reported 40.6 million active customers at its European mobile operations at the end of 2019, down 5 percent from a year earlier as tough competition in Italy offset growth in other markets. Annual revenues at the 3 Group were still up 12 percent to HKD 87.5 billion and 17 percent higher in local currency thanks to the acquisition of 100 percent of Wind Tre in Italy.
EBITDA improved 17 percent to HKD 33.5 billion and was up 21 percent in local currency. The EBITDA margin rose by 2 percent points to 45 percent, helped by a 1 percent reduction in net customer acquisition costs. EBIT increased 14 percent to HKD 20.1 billion.
A focus on managing churn led to a reduction in the average postpaid monthly churn rate to 1.3 percent in 2019 from 1.4 percent in 2018, the company said. Postpaid increased to 50 percent of the total registered customer base of 48.7 million, up from 40 percent in 2018. Group ARPU for active customers still fell 8 percent to EUR 12.94, mainly due to the higher share of Wind Tre customers, which have lower ARPU, as well as keen competition in all markets and the EU cut to intra-call and SMS rates.
Towers company ready by mid-year
Hutchison said it was making progress on plans to spin off its tower assets in a new company, as first announced in August. The new subsidiary of its telecom arm should be ready by mid-2020. The company is expected to own 28,500 towers with an average tenancy ratio of 1.2x, active across six European markets. On a full-year basis, its projected EBITDA will be around EUR 300 million.
3 Group's capex totaled HKD 18.1 billion in 2019, excluding licences; it did not give a comparative figure for 2018. Hutchison said data traffic increased 35 percent to 4,054 PB in 2019, and average usage per active customer rose to 102.3 GB from 71.9 GB in 2018.
Except for Sweden and Denmark, all the 3 Group Europe operations have sufficient 5G spectrum, the company said. 3 UK is progressively rolling out 5G in London and 65 other locations since 2019, and the operations in Austria and Ireland are launching 5G / fixed wireless access offers in 2019 and 2020 respectively.
