{"id":36353,"date":"2013-04-22T15:53:19","date_gmt":"2013-04-22T13:53:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=36353"},"modified":"2013-04-23T08:50:55","modified_gmt":"2013-04-23T06:50:55","slug":"saudi-telecom-talks-up-cell-c-revenue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/mobile\/36353\/saudi-telecom-talks-up-cell-c-revenue\/","title":{"rendered":"STC talks up Cell C revenue"},"content":{"rendered":"

Saudi Telecom Company (STC<\/a>), which indirectly owns a significant stake in Cell C<\/a>, says that it witnessed a 23% growth in revenue in its controlled subsidiaries, in Q1 2013, compared to the same period in 2012.<\/p>\n

This would include South Africa\u2019s third operator as, in 2008, STC invested $2.6 billion in a 35% stake in Oger Telecom<\/a>, the Lebanese-controlled firm which has an indirect 75% holding in Cell C.<\/p>\n

On Monday (22 April), STC announced its financial results for the three months ending March 2013, with net income down to SR1.550 billion (R3.84 billion) compared to SR2,521 billion (R6.25 billion) for the corresponding quarter last year, with a decrease of 38.5%.<\/p>\n

The latest figured however, show a whopping 231% increase from SR468 million generated in the prior quarter, as the company cited the re-evaluation of its investments fair value in in Cell C and Aircel (India) during the fourth quarter, which resulted in recognising a one-time, non-recurring and non-cash charge of SR641 million (R1.506 billion) provisions from impairment of intangible assets.<\/p>\n

STC said at the time (January 2013) that its investments in India-based Aircel, Cell C and Axis, were not performing up to expectations, \u201cand we intend to employ continued focus to enhance the performance of these companies.\u201d<\/p>\n

International turnaround<\/strong><\/p>\n

However, on Monday STC said that, with regards to international operations, it continues to grow subsidiaries & affiliate companies operations driven by continued subscriber additions.<\/p>\n

\u201cDuring Q1, 2013 the group witnessed revenue growth of 23% in the controlled subsidiaries compared to same period last year, driven by continued market share growth in post-paid, pre-paid and wireless broadband services”<\/p>\n

“With that, STC will continue to employ more efforts and continued focus to enhance the performance of Aircel, Cell C and Axis operations,\u201d STC said.<\/p>\n

STC’s subscriber base as of Q1, 2013 exceeded 170 million.<\/p>\n

Domestically, STC said it continued to deploy 3G & 3.5G networks to reach various parts of the country and continued with deploying 4G network to reach more than 5,000 sites.<\/p>\n

Cell C<\/strong><\/p>\n

Business Times reported on Sunday (21 April) that\u00a0Cell C\u2019s future will depend on partnering with a large local telecoms player like\u00a0Telkom<\/a>, or by finding a foreign partner with \u2018deep pockets\u2019.<\/p>\n

According to the report, Cell C CEO\u00a0Alan Knott-Craig<\/a>\u00a0said that Cell C would need to be swallowed up by a \u201clarger group to compete with the likes of\u00a0Vodacom<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0MTN<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are averaging between 800,000 and one million gross connections in a month,\u201d Knott-Craig told Business Times.<\/p>\n

The chief executive\u00a0sayid that it remains possible for Cell C to gain a 25% share of South Africa\u2019s cellular market.<\/p>\n

Cell C last reported its results for the year ended 2010, with pre-tax earnings of R1.4 billion, and a revenue of\u00a0R10.2 billion.<\/p>\n

The group also pointed to its long-term debt of R7.5 billion, and R500m in liabilities during the team, which were required to be settled last year.<\/p>\n

More on Cell C and STC<\/h3>\n

25% market share achievable: Knott-Craig<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Cell C looking for partner: report<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Cell C backer sees CEO step down<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Saudi Telecom takes big hit on Cell C spend<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Cell C\/8ta consolidation on the cards for 2013?<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Saudi Telecom Company, which indirectly owns a significant stake in Cell C, says that it witnessed a 23% growth in revenue in its controlled subsidiaries, in Q1, 2013.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":30348,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[5665,43,5666,42,26,1186,5664],"class_list":["post-36353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mobile","tag-aircel","tag-alan-knott-craig","tag-axis","tag-cell-c","tag-headline","tag-oger-telecom","tag-stc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36353"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36353\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36361,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36353\/revisions\/36361"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}