(MENAFN- AFP) Spanish telecoms giant Telefonica posted Thursday an 18.4 percent increase in net profit in the second quarter and lifted its revenue target for 2017.
The heavily indebted company said its net profit in the April-June period was 821 million euros ($957 million), up from 693 million euros a year earlier but below the figure of 835 million euros predicted by analysts polled by financial data company Factset.
Revenues increased by 1.9 percent in the second quarter over the same year-ago period to 12.96 billion euros, boosted by stronger mobile data revenues and higher handset sales, Telefonica said in a statement.
The company said it now expects revenues to grow by over 1.5 percent this year. It had previously guided for "stable" revenue growth in 2017.
"The strength and better business trends in the first half of the year, as well as being well-positioned to continue capturing sustainable growth in the coming quarters, allow us to upgrade our guidance for 2017," Telefonica executive chairman Jose Maria Alvarez-Pallete said in a statement.
The company reduced its net debt by 0.2 percent in the second quarter from the first quarter to 48.5 billion euros.
Telefonica is present in 21 countries. It main markets are Spain and Brazil but it is present in nearly all of Latin America as well as Germany and Britain. It has 127,000 employees.
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