Telefónica reported financial results in line with the growth targets for both the Group as a whole and for the different geographic areas (Spain, rest of Europe, and Latin America), leaving it on track to meet the financial targets announced for 2008. Telefónica achieved overall revenues of EUR 28.149billion in the first six months of 2008, for a year-on-year increase of 1.2%. Changes in the consolidation perimeter subtract 2.8 percentage points to revenue growth, while the impact of foreign exchange rates reduced the growth by another 2.8 percentage points. Year-on-year revenue growth was 1.2% in the April-June 2008 period.
Some highlights:
- Total accesses (wireless + wireline across all regions) rose 15.2% compared to June 2007 to 245.1 million, due to the high commercial activity recorded across markets. This growth was underpinned by the increase in wireless (+19%), broadband (+25.1%) and pay TV (+57.4%) accesses.
- By type of access, Telefónica Group’s mobile accesses stood close to 182.7 million at the end of June, with around 15 million additional customers (+54.3% year-on-year) in the six-month period. The main contributors were Brazil (nearly 7 million customers, around 3 million stripping out the incorporation of Telemig in April 2008), Mexico (1.6 million), Peru (1.3 million) and Germany (1.1 million).
- Retail Internet broadband accesses stood at close to 11.5 million, with a year-on-year rise of 25.1%, driven by the growing penetration of voice, ADSL and Pay TV bundles. Accesses in Spain reached over 5 million (+18.3% year-on-year), 5.5 million in Latin America (+26.1% year-on-year), and 917,000 in Europe (+69.7% year-on-year). Net adds in the first half of 2008 totaled 1.1 million accesses, of which 390,923 were in Spain, 489,981 in Latin America and 247,026 in Europe.
- Pay TV accesses stood at over 2 million at end of the first half of the year, up 57.4% on the prior year, due to net adds of close to 280,000 accesses in the first half (+25% compared to the same period of 2007). The Company currently offers Pay TV services in Spain, the Czech Republic, Peru, Chile, Colombia and Brazil.