'Southern Telecom net profit up 10.7% to RUB 1.3 bln'

Russian fixed-line telecommunications provider Southern Telecommunications (UTK) saw its revenue in the first nine months of 2009 grow 5 percent year-on-year to RUB 16.23 billion. Operating expenses rose by 3.5 percent to RUB 12.01 billion. EBITDA rose by 9.1 percent from the year-ago period to RUB 6.31 billion, and the EBITDA margin was down 1.5 percent year-on-year to 38.9 percent. In the first nine months to September, net profit rose 10.7 percent year-on-year to RUB 1.31 billion, compared to RUB 1.18 billion in the corresponding period of 2008. Revenues from local telephone services grew by 1.7 percent to RUB 7.11 billion due to an increase in local tariffs from 1 March, and accounted for 45.6 percent of the company's telecom revenues. Revenues from intra-zonal telephone services went down 6.3 percent to RUB 2.592 billion due to a decrease in demand for fixed-to-fixed and fixed-to-mobile connections. Revenues from data transfer and internet access services grew by 31.7 percent to RUB 4.01 billion thanks to a bigger internet subscriber base. Revenues from interconnection and traffic transit services decreased 11.5 percent to RUB 1.48 billion due to structural changes in traffic and the elimination of the connection point maintenance service from the structure of interconnection service.

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Related terms: ebitda, internet, local, net profit, revenue, russia, structural, telecom, telecommunications, traffic