Riyadh:
Etihad Etisalat (Mobily) achieved net profit for the fourth 2018 reached SAR 80 million compared with losses at SAR 182 million in Q4 2017. Mobily succeeded in reducing its net losses by 82.7% for the year ended in 31st December 2018, where the net losses for the year 2018 amounted to SAR 123 million versus net losses of SAR 709 million for the year 2017. This improvement is due to Mobily continued to improve its revenues for the six consecutive quarter Q4 2018 revenues witnessed a YoY growth of 11.9%, and amounted to SAR 3,162 Million versus SAR 2,827 Million in Q4 2017, and annual revenues grow by by 4.5% to reach SAR 11,865 million for the year 2018 versus SAR 11,351 million for the year 2017 This is mainly attributed to continued growth of; subscribers base and improvement of subscribers mix, data revenues, business unit revenues, and FTTH revenues.
This was achieved despite the market, regulatory and economic challenges including the reduction of mobile termination rates. Taking out the impact of the decrease of the mobile termination rates, quarterly revenues would have grown by 14% and annually revenues would have grown by 6.5%.
For the fifth consecutive quarter, Mobily succeeded to improve its quarterly EBITDA reaching SAR 1,341 million in Q4 2018 versus SAR 911 million in Q4 2017, or an increase of 47%. Moreover Mobily succeeded in increasing EBITDA of 2018 reaching the highest EBITDA achieved in five years SAR 4,531 million versus SAR 3,646 million in 2017 representing an increase of 24.3%. The improvement in EBITDA is attributed to the increase in revenues, the improvement in operational performance supported by increasing in the efficiency in managing the operational expenses, the decrease in G&A expenses, the implementation of IFRS 15 and 9 and the reversal of provisions related to government fees, which covered all the negative impact resulted from the change in the mechanism of calculating government fees. EBITDA margin reached 42% for Q4 2018 and 38% for the year 2018.
Mobily succeeded in reducing its net debt to the lowest level since 2012, since the beginning of 2017, Mobily succeeded in repaying SAR 2.7 billion. Mobily net debt amounted to SAR 11.3 billion at the end of 2018 versus SAR 12.7 billion at the end of 2017 and versus SAR 14 billion at the end of 2016.
Furthermore the company made an early repayment of SAR 1 billion, which reflects the continued concentration from the company on deleveraging.
Capex in 2018 increased to SAR 2,819 million versus SAR 2,268 million in 2017. This is due to continuous deployment of network modernization project that started in Q4 2017 and the capitalization of the spectrum in 2018.
Mobily succeeded in increasing its operational cash flow to the highest since 2011, which supported the company in deleveraging, despite the increase in CAPEX by SAR 551 million, 2018 Operational Cash Flow (EBITDA-CAPEX) reached SAR 1,712 million versus SAR 1,378 million in 2017, representing an improvement of 24% compared to the same period last year.
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