Telekom Serbia published consolidated financial reports for last year, which brought a trend of reduced profitability, primarily due to the growth of the company’s debt, the brokerage house Momentum estimated today.
Consolidated business income in 2019 increased by 6.6 percent to 1.11 billion euros, primarily due to the growth of the multimedia segment (a jump of 43.8 percent), while the mobile telephony segment recorded a slight growth of 1.2 percent.
As in previous years, fixed telephony has continued to decline in revenue, last year at a rate of 5.1 percent, according to Momentum brokers.
It is added that profit before interest, taxes and depreciation (EBITDA) increased by 24.6 percent to 48.4 billion dinars, while operating profit fell by 43.2 percent to 57.5 million euros, primarily due to rising depreciation costs (partly due to changes in accounting policies).
Net profit fell 77.3 percent to 20.8 million euros due to a sharp rise in financial expenses to 15.8 million euros.
According to the broker, the decline in the company’s final result was due to an increase in total debt by 35 percent to 1.20 billion euros, while net debt jumped 48.8 percent to 1.12 billion euros.
The company scheduled the regular assembly of shareholders for July 27, and the management proposed that the realized profit not be shared this year as well, ie that the shareholders be left without a dividend.
The state is the largest shareholder of Telecom with 58.1 percent of shares, citizens, former and current employees of the company own 21.9 percent of shares, while 20 percent of the capital consists of their own shares.
Although Telekom shares were divided back in 2012, they are still not traded on the Belgrade Stock Exchange because the company did not submit a request for listing on the market, Momentum brokers reminded, BiF reports.
