PalTel announces financial results for H1 

(MENAFN Press) The Palestine Telecommunications Company, PalTel announced its financial results for the second quarter for 2010. Consolidated net operating revenues grew 8.54% to reach US 231.48m at the end of H1-2010 compared with US 213.27m at the end of H1-2009. In regards to the operating revenues of each segment, the company achieved a growth in its mobile, fixed Line and IT revenues by 12.01%, 8.07%, and 12.50% respectively, while the data and media revenues declined by 0.07% and 4.85% respectively.

The consolidated operating income for the company reached US 78.21m by the end of H1-2010 compared with US 70.01m by the end of H1-2010, a growth of 11.71%. This growth was achieved by an increase in consolidated revenues and in light of the positive effect of the new operating policy. The net income was affected by other expenses that rose to US 12.6m compared with US 1.21m at the end of H1-2010, relating to a non-recurring provision for contingent liabilities that may arise from the Palestine National Authority claims.

The consolidated net income decreased by 13.38% to stand at US 57.60m at the end of H1-2010 compared with US 66.50m at the end of H1-2009. This decline is attributable to losses in investments in VTel Holdings. These losses increased to reach US 5.16m at the end of H1-2010 compared with US 0.52m at the end of H1-2009.

Current Operating Performance

Fixed Line

The number of fixed line subscribers witnessed a 12.11% growth rate to stand at 404,187 subscribers compared with 360,534 as of the end of H1-2009. This growth resulted from new acquisition campaigns. The average monthly revenue per fixed line subscriber reached US15.85 at the end of H1-2010 compared with US15.61 at the end of H1-2009.

Paltel Group's restructuring drive is continuing to focus on optimizing operations by strengthening the company's core business while relying on outsourcing for other services. As part of this restructuring, Mr. Abdul Majeed Melhem was appointed on August 1, 2010 as the new General Manager of PalTel, the fixed line operator.

Mr. Melhem has worked at Jawwal (mobile operator) since 1999 and was director of Sales during the period when the Mobile operator witnessed its marked increase in its subscriber base to reach the 2 million threshold. Additionally, Mr. Melhem was the Director of Wholesale at Paltel Group and was responsible for wholesale operations for the fixed line operator.

Mobile

The mobile segment witnessed a strong growth where the subscribers' base grew by 30.34% to stand at 2.072m at the end of H1-2010 compared with 1.589m at the end of H1-2009, and grew by 15.09% compared with the end of 2009 where as the total number of subscribers was 1.800m.

This growth in the number of mobile subscribers was affected by several acquisition campaigns and new products and services that targeted existing and prospective customers.

The blended ARPU declined by 13.8% to reach US14.95/subscriber/month during the first half of 2010 compared with US17.35/subscriber/month in H1-2009. This decrease in the ARPU is attributable to the low ARPU of the new customers, in addition to offering larger discounts to the customers.

Data

The data segment achieved a 21.40% growth rate in the number of ADSL lines to stand at 102,389 lines by the end of H1-2010 compared with 84,338 lines as of the end of H1-2009 and 92,482 lines by the end of 2009. The increase in the penetration rate of the ADSL lines (per landline) from 23.39% at the end of H1-2009 to 25.33% at the end of H1-2010 was accompanied by an increase in the ARPU from US 22.64 (end of H1-2009) to US 24.78 (end of H1-2010). This increase is due to increase the number of subscribers of the high speed lines encouraged by the decrease of the ADSL prices.

Mr. Rami Shamshoum was appointed on August 8, 2010 as the General Manager of Hadara, a Technology and Internet company belonging to the Group as part and in parallel of the new restructuring strategy for Paltel GroupPrior to his appointment, Mr. Shamshoum served as the Chief Commercial Officer for PalTelMr. Mahmoud Yassin, the former General Manager of Hadara has been appointed as the Chief Strategy Officer of the Paltel Group.