Altice Portugal’s revenues will rise 13.7% year-on-year to 2,629 million euros in 2021, investing 483 million euros in the period, the owner of Meo announced today.
“In full-year 2022, revenues and EBITDA [earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization] reached 2,629 million euros and 906 million euros, representing year-on-year growth of +13.7% and +6.2%, respectively,” the company, led by Ana Figueiredo, said in a statement.
Last year, Altice Portugal’s investment “was 483 million euros, maintaining the level of investment in the global transformation of infrastructures, innovation and investment in the country. Until 2021, the investment was 487 million euros.
“The continued acquisition of customers and the maintenance of low levels of disconnection allowed the fixed services base to grow by 5.3% in the last 12 months, with the pay-TV customer base growing by 4.3%,” says the owner of Meo.
In the fourth quarter of last year, the total number of fixed services grew by 2.9% to 5.8 million and the total number of pay-TV customers grew by 1% to 1.8 million.
According to Altice Portugal, all segments and business lines “grew revenues in the fourth quarter of 2022, an increase of 11.3% compared to the same period last year, and amounted to 695 million euros”.
Meo’s owner attributes this performance to the “continued expansion of the customer base in all segments, reduced churn, diversification of the bouquet of increasingly digital services, innovation and superior quality of service”.
Between October and December, EBITDA grew by 2.1% to 218 million euros, “driven by the growth of the customer base and revenues from ‘core’ services and continued discipline on operating costs”, he adds, noting that “the margin percentage is diluted by the significant growth of new businesses beyond the traditional ‘telco’.
In the last quarter of last year, investments amounted to 143 million euros, “reinforcing the continuous investment in the mobile network, in the last generation ‘core’ infrastructures and in the expansion of the fiber network in Portugal, for a total of 6.2 million homes by the end of 2022.
The focus on strengthening the mobile network and, in particular, the deployment of 5G, Altice Portugal said, “led to an increase in the Portuguese population coverage rate from 68.9% at the end of the second quarter to 85.0% at the end of the third quarter and 90.4% at the end of the fourth quarter.”
The 4G population coverage rate “remained at 99.8%”.
In the consumer segment, revenues amounted to EUR 339 million in the last quarter, an increase of 4.6% year-on-year.
“The unique customer base continued to grow, increasing by 1.7% year-on-year, with 27,000 net additions to a total of 1.7 million,” it added.
Business services revenues also grew, in this case by 18.4%, “mainly driven by the growth of Altice Labs,” to €356 million.
Citing reports from the National Communications Authority (Anacom), Altice Portugal stresses that “Meo consolidated its leadership in all services, maintaining this relative position for the third consecutive quarter,” and that the operator was “the operator with the lowest number of complaints per thousand customers for the fourth consecutive year.”
