As of 31-Mar-2008, the Telefónica Group was serving a total of 233.5 million access points (fixed, broadband, wireless and pay TV customers) across all its markets, up by 12.9% from a year earlier. This growth was underpinned by the increase in wireless (+16.3%), broadband (+26.8%) and pay TV (+64.4%) accesses.
Telefónica reported organic growth in revenue (+7%), OIBDA (+8.2%) and operating income (+17.2%), underscoring the value of its geographic and business diversification. In absolute terms, Telefónica Latinoamérica increased its weight over Telefónica Group revenues, accounting for 37.1% of the total. Telefónica España and Telefónica Europa accounted for 36.9% and 25% of the total revenues of the Telefónica Group respectively.
Some operational highlights for Q1:
- By access type, the Telefónica Group's wireless accesses topped 171 million at the end of the first quarter, with net adds of around 4 million customers. The main contributors were Brazil (839,446), Mexico (724,548), Peru (632,114) and Germany (535,994).
- Retail internet broadband accesses surged 26.8% year-on-year to over 10.8 million at the end of March, driven by: the strong take-up for ADSL, TV and voice bundles, making significant contributions to developing the broadband market and forging customer loyalty. In Spain, retail broadband accesses surpassed 4.8 million (up 20.2% year-on-year), in Latin America, 5.2 million (+29.5% year-on-year) and in Europe, 800,000 (+58.4% year-on-year). Net adds in the third quarter stood at nearly 222,000 in Spain, while this figure amounted to 201,300 and 129,900 in Latin America and Europe respectively.
- Pay TV accesses at the end of the quarter exceeded 1.8 million, 64.4% more than a year before, with operations up and running in Spain, the Czech Republic, Peru, Chile, Colombia and Brazil. Pay TV, Telefónica Latinoamérica already has over 1.2 million pay TV subscribers, with operations in Peru, Chile, Colombia and Brazil, compared to 700,148 customers in March 2007.
- Telefónica Spain continues to drive sector growth, with like-for-like increases in revenue and OIBDA of 2.6% an 6.4%, respectively, fuelled by improvement in the broadband business and a marked increase in wireless data revenue
- Telefónica Latin America delivered healthy organic growth in both revenue (12.6%) and OIBDA (11.8%) thanks to the sharp growth of the wireless business and the penetration increase of broadband and pay TV
- Telefónica Europe reported robust organic growth in revenue (+6.4%) and OIBDA (+5.3%), in a quarter featuring a strong commercial effort in all the markets
- Q1 CapEx amounted to 1,319 million euros, leaving operating cash flow (OIBDA-CapEx) of 4,057 million euros.
