Tiscali today confirmed it is to sell of four of its country operations in a bid to concentrate on its core businesses.

The pan-European ISP intends to complete the sale of assets in Switzerland, South Africa, Norway and Sweden by the end of the year. Confirmation of Tiscali's plans, first mooted in February, to make its operation leaner came as the ISP notched up a record growth in broadband punters.

It signed up 400,000 new subscribers in the first three months of the year, taking the number of ADSL customers at the end of March to 1.24m. Add on the 80,000 or so new sign-ups in April and Tiscali claims to have some 1.32m broadband punters. It also has 6.8m active dial-up users. This "sharp rise" in broadband accounts has fed through to organic revenue growth at the ISP, the company says.

Revenues jumped 26 per cent from Q1 03 to €267m (£180m) this year, while Group loss fell 39 per cent from € 85.3m (£57m) to €52.1m (£35m).

Tiscali forecasts revenues for the year should grow 30 per cent to more than €1.2bn (£674m) with the number of broadband punters rising to 1.6m. ®

Related stories

Tiscali mulls sale of some country ops
Tiscali names new chief exec
Tiscali is UK's 'fastest-growing' broadband ISP