Telenor reported lower results for the third quarter, as the ongoing impact of the Covid-19 pandemic weighed on its Asian mobile operators, offsetting positive trends in Scandinavia. Nevertheless, the company maintained its outlook for flat to slightly higher underlying results in the full year, amid signs of improvement and nearly 2 million subscribers added in Q3.
Revenues fell 3.5 percent year-on-year to NOK 27.41 billion in Q3, but were up 0.3 percent on an organic basis. Subscription and traffic revenues were down just 0.1 percent on an organic basis, compared to the full-year forecast for 0-1 percent to growth.
Adjusted EBITDA fell 5.6 percent to NOK 12.86 billion and dropped 2.2 percent on an organic basis. Telenor expects 0-2 percent growth in the result over the full year, in line with the 1.4 percent rise over the first nine months of 2021.
Telenor's net profit fell to NOK 2.64 billion from NOK 4.53 billion a year ago, hurt by currency effects, higher financial costs and lower gains from disposals. With capex little changed at just over NOK 4 billion in Q3, free cash flow improved to NOK 7.19 billion from NOK 4.37 billion a year earlier, helped by another payment for its CEE operations sold in 2018 and working capital improvements. Telenor said the strong free cash flow helped reduce leverage to 1.9x at the end of September.
The group's mobile subscriber base increased by 1.8 million in the three months to 172 million, driven by 1.6 million new customers at Grameenphone in Bangladesh. Telenor, Pakistan, Digi and Dtac all had positive subscriber growth, and Finland and Denmark also gained mobile customers.
