Telenor said on Monday the combined EBITDA, before other items, of its wireless units in Serbia and Montenegro fell to 664 million Norwegian crowns ($79.7 million/69.6 million euro) in the first half of 2017, from 677 million Norwegian crowns a year earlier.
The combined operating profit of the Norwegian telecommunications group’s units in the two countries contracted 7.9% year on year to 396 million Norwegian crowns, while total revenues dropped 4.8% to 1.8 billion crowns, Telenor said in its first half 2017 financial report.
The company invested 152 million Norwegian crowns in Serbia and Montenegro during the six-month period, down from 166 million crowns a year ago.
Telenor’s subscriptions in the two countries decreased to 3.24 million at the end of June from 3.39 million a year earlier. At the end of 2016, the company had 3.34 million subscribers in the two countries.
Telenor’s wireless unit competes on the Serbian market of some 7.2 million people with Telekom Srbija’s mobile arm, MTS, and VIP Mobile, a unit of Telekom Austria Group.
Telenor’s main rival in Montenegro is T-Mobile Crna Gora, owned by the Hungarian unit of Deutsche Telekom, Magyar Telekom. M:tel, the third mobile operator in the Adriatic state of some 630,000 people, is majority owned by Telekom Srbija.
Elsewhere in Southeast Europe, Telenor Group also operates in Bulgaria.
The exchange rate used by Telenor in reporting its H1 figures was 0.0744 Norwegian crowns per one Serbian dinar, and 9.1738 crowns per euro.
