OREANDA-NEWS.  The total revenue of telecommunication and IT services provider TEO (hereinafter – “the Company”) during the first half of 2014 amounted to LTL 343.3 million and net profit amounted to LTL 63.7 million. Successful development of the services has led to continuing growth of the number of customers, who use smart television service and internet, while the structural changes of organization made it possible to increase the efficiency of the Company’s activities.
 
In March the Company introduced a new user interface of smart television service, which increased interest in this service by customers. At end of June, the number of TEO smart television service users increased by 16.6 % compared with same period previous year, giving that the number of customers using smart and digital TEO pay-TV services end of June amounted to 176.4 thousand. In June TEO also has offered a possibility to try new generation Internet TV service “Interneto.tv” to the customers of Omnitel.
 
Continuing investments to the new generation fiber-optic network have led to the growing number of Internet service users. The number of TEO Internet service customers, including wireless "TEO Wi-Fi" users, over the year increased by 17.6 per cent. At the end of June TEO Internet access was used by 463.6 thousand customers.
 
More and more attention is given to the development of IT services. In the first half of the year, when the e-shop for electronic equipment was opened, the sales of equipment increased by one third over a year.
 
“In the beginning of the year we have renewed some of our services and we can see already the results of these changes: the best evaluation of new features is growing number of our customers and their positive feedback. While the telecommunications market was shrinking, the results of TEO are outperforming the market trends” – Kкstutis Љliuћas, General Manager of TEO, said when commenting on the activity results.
 
With the organizational changes in June, the activities of TEO Group companies BDC and Lintel were more integrated into TEO. Most of the employees of BDC from June are working in the units of TEO.
 
“The efficiency improvement program and the setup of our new organization in the beginning of the year will make it possible to react faster to the needs of our customers, to create the services and solutions, which are easy to use. The reorganization will make it possible to achieve better results in the long term“, - K.Љliuћas said.
 
New organizational setup made it possible to reduce the operating expenses by 5 per cent, if excluding non-recurring expenses. EBITDA margin, excluding non-recurring items related to the reorganization, improved compared to last year, and the EBITDA margin for the first six months of 2014 reached 42.8 per cent. Last year this margin was 42.6 per cent.
 
Last year TEO revenue for the first six months was LTL 360.5 million, and net profit – LTL 75.6 million. The revenue this year, as in earlier periods, was impacted by decreasing revenue from voice services.
 
During the first half of this year, the Company's share of revenue from Internet services from total amount of revenue amounted to 26.9 per cent, data communication services and network capacity sales – 11.6 per cent, IT services – 8.5 per cent, and from television services – 8.9 per cent. Share of revenue from voice telephony services from total amount of revenue in the first half of 2014 amounted to 40.4 per cent, and from other services – 3.6 per cent.
 
According to the data of the Communications Regulatory Authority of the Republic of Lithuania, in the first quarter of 2014 TEO market share, in terms of revenue, of the Internet access services amounted to 45.8 per cent, and in digital pay-TV services – 42.1 per cent. TEO market share for fixed telephony services in the first quarter of 2014 was 93.8 per cent.
 
The Company has allocated LTL 36 million for investment during the first six months of this year. The majority of these investments went to further expansion of the core network and development of the next-generation fiber-optic access network and amounted to LTL 32 million. The investment of almost LTL 3 million was allocated to the development of IT systems.