KPN doubles profits on falling sales

Dutch telco holding its own

By John Oates • Get more from this author

Posted in Telecoms, 2nd November 2004 09:58 GMT

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Dutch telco KPN doubled profits in the third quarter despite a fall in sales. For the period ended 30 September 2005 KPN made net profits of €288m, up from €139m for the same period of 2003. Sales for the period were €2, 948m down from €3, 009 in the third quarter of 2003.

Net sales for the mobile division grew by over six per cent driven by strong growth in Germany and Belgium. Fixed line revenues decreased by €149m or 7.8 per cent - most of the fall explained by tariff reductions. KPN now has 1.2m ADSL customers.

Ad Scheepbouwer, CEO of KPN, said the results showed the improved market share of the mobile division was already paying off. He said the firm's focus would now change: "Our prime focus is now on our fixed business where our objective is to maintain market share of our traditional business in a declining market and to aggressively build up our market share in new growth markets."

In the third quarter the mobile division added 800, 000 new customers giving it 16.4m mobile customers in total.

The full results are available for download from this page. ®