Revenues of the Telefónica Group over the first three months of the year amounted 12,036.4 million EURs and recorded a year-on-year growth of 45.4%, supported by the general growth in every business lines. This increase it is also affected by the first consolidation of O2 Group as of February 2006 and Cesky Telecom as of July 2005 as well as the appreciation of the Latin American currencies in relation to the EUR. The organic growth of revenues stands at 8.9%.
Some highlights:
- As of the end of March, the Telefónica Group reached 186.1 million customer access services, a year-on-year increase of 42.2%, with cellular and retail Internet broadband accesses being the main contributors to this performance. Of the total number of accesses, 184.2 million correspond to final client accesses and 1.9 million to wholesale accesses.
- Telefónica Group's cellular accesses totaled 131.3 million at 31st March 2006, equivalent to a 61.2% year-on-year increase. The strong commercial activity in the Telefónica Móviles Group's operating markets, with a net gain over the quarter of 4.1 million clients allowed to manage a 98.5 million client base, equivalent to a 21% year-on-year growth. In Telefónica O2 Europe, cellular accesses amounted to 32.8 million, of which 4.7 million belong to Cesky Telecom and 28.1 million to O2 Group.
- The number of retail Internet broadband accesses stood at 6.3 million (+55.4%), constituting one of the main driving forces of the growth of the fixed operators. The figure has exceeded the 3 million mark in Spain, up 46.8% up over the first quarter of 2005, and in Latin America it has reached 2.9 million (+50.2% year-on-year).
- By business lines, the main contributor to Telefonica Group's revenues continued to be Telefónica Móviles Group, which ended the quarter with a growth in revenues of 17.7% versus March 2005 reaching 4,327.3 million EURs, due to the increase in the total number of clients and traffic. Telefónica Latinoamerica Group's revenues in the January-March 2006 period reached 2,318.1 million EURs, a 30.6% year-on-year increase impacted very positively by the exchange rate effect, which contributed with 24.5 percentage points to revenue growth. Telefonica de Espana Group's revenues totaled 2,944.3 million EURs, up 3.3% versus those obtained in the first three months of 2005 pushed by Broadband revenues (+35%).
- Telefónica O2 Europe, constituted by the O2 Group from February to March 2006, Cesky Telecom and Telefonica Deutschland from January to March 2006 contributed with 2,409.2 million EURs of revenues.
- Following the acquisitions made by the Telefónica Group during 2005, consolidated revenues reflected a greater geographic diversification. Spain represents 40.7% and Latin America 36.6%, due to the greater weight of Europe, excluding Spain (21.8%). The UK accounted for 9.5% of total revenues, Germany for 5.1% and the Czech Republic 4.2%. Brazil remained almost stable in terms of its contribution (16.1%) to consolidated revenues.
- Cape for the first quarter of 2006 amounted 1,307.2 million EURs and recorded a strong year-on-year growth (+76.4%) as a result of greater investments in broadband in the fixed telephony business in both Spain and South America and the first consolidation of the O2 Group and Cesky Telecom.
