Gulf telcos Ooredoo, Wataniya post Q2 profit drops
Nawras Q2 net profit 9.9 mln rials, up 32 pct
DUBAI, July 23, (RTRS): Qatar’s Ooredoo reported a 11 percent drop in second-quarter profit on Wednesday as the telecom operator was impacted by the political situation in Iraq and start-up costs for its business in Myanmar.
The former monopoly, which operates in about 15 countries across the Middle East, Africa and Asia, made a net profit of 817 million riyals ($224.4 million) in the three months to June 30, down from 923 million riyals in the year-earlier period, it said in a statement.
Two analysts polled by Reuters had forecast Ooredoo would make a quarterly profit of 544.2 million riyals and 623.3 million riyals respectively.
It is the third quarter in the last four in which Ooredoo has reported declining net profit.
In the three months to June 30, revenue dropped 3 percent year-on-year to 8.4 billion riyals as strong performances by its businesses in Qatar, Oman and Algeria were overshadowed by lower contributions from Indonesia, Kuwait and Iraq.
Iraq has been suffering from political turmoil in recent months after the Islamic State militant group seized large swathes of the country.
While it did not provide a quarterly breakdown, revenue from its Iraq unit, Asiacell, dropped 9.6 percent year-onyear to 1.6 billion riyals in the second quarter, according to Reuters calculations based on financial statements.
Ooredoo was awarded a licence for Myanmar in February and the firm has paid the first instalment towards this, it said in the statement without elaborating. It plans to commence operations in the Asian nation in the third quarter, it added.
The firm said it had 93.9 million customers across the group at the end of June, up 2 percent on the same point of 2013. Wataniya, Kuwait’s No.2 telecom operator, reported a 21.3 percent decline in second-quarter profit as revenue slumped in its home market as well as Tunisia and the Palestinian Territories.
The firm made a net profit of 18 million dinars ($63.7 million) in the three months to June 30, down from 22.9 million dinars in the year-earlier period, according to a separate earnings statement to its parent firm.