Revenues of Estonia's EMT, Elion decline in Q1

Photo: Mihkel Maripuu / Postimees

First-quarter revenues of Elion, the Estonian broadband subsidiary of Teliasonera, declined 3.1 percent year on year calculated in euros and 7 percent calculated in Swedish kronor, the interim report of Teliasonera shows.

Quarterly revenue of the mobile subsidiary EMT fell 13.2 percent measured in euros and 16.7 percent measured in kronor.

Revenues of EMT and Elion in the first quarter totaled respectively 299 million and 400 million Swedish kronor.

Elion's earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) climbed 3.2 percent year on year to 112 million Swedish kronor and EBITDA margin expended from 25.1 percent in the first quarter of 2012 to 28 percent this year. The EBITDA of EMT declined 10.9 percent to 90 million euros and EBITDA margin increased from 28.1 percent to 30.1 percent.

Competitor Elisa Eesti said its revenue in the first quarter fell 14.1 percent from the same period a year ago to 21.3 million euro. Revenue in the first quarter of 2012 came to 24.8 million euros.

The CEO of the Estonian operation of Elisa, Sami Seppanen, said the decline was attributable to a reduction in mobile termination rates, or interconnect revenues in mobile telephony service. The rates were cut in accordance with an EU directive from Jan. 1 this year.

The customer base of Elisa grew by 57,000 during the year to 635,023 as of the end of March 2013.

Seppanen said that in the current year Elisa has laid its principal focus on developing and upgrading its 4G networks and putting together an offer of new service solutions. "In February Elisa opened the largest 4G covered area in Estonia, which covers more than 75 percent of the Estonian population with the help of 500 base stations. Already in April Elisa will add 57 more new 4G LTE base stations in Estonia," he said.

Elion said the number of users of the nutiTV television service among its customers grew by more than 10 percent during the year to almost 160,000 subscribers of the television service at the end of March. The number of customers of the internet service climbed 6 percent year on year to 216,000.

Investments by Elion in network and product development during the first three months of 2013 totaled 6.5 million euros. In 2013, the company will continue laying out the optical cable network enabling ultra high speed internet, improving the quality of its network and developing new services.

By the end of the first quarter of 2013 Elion was ready to launch the Home Control service, stepping into the brand new business segment of digital home. Home Control enables a homeowner and the whole family to monitor their home with cameras and other sensors, arm the surveillance, get notifications about incidents, automate electrical appliances, control their home from a distance and follow statistics on energy consumption.

The Home Control service and devices for it are being prepared under the leadership of Estonians for the whole Scandinavian market in the Teliasonera group. Elion said that in addition the Home Control service is set to boost the nuber of broadband customers.