One of Turkey’s leading information and communication technologies companies, Türk Telekom, beat expectations as its net profit more than doubled from January through March on the back of higher gross profit margin, strong gain in subscribers and lower financial expenses.
The company’s net profit surged 105% year-on-year in the first quarter to TL 1.36 billion ($163.6 million), it said in a statement Thursday, compared to an average expectation of nearly TL 1.1 billion.
Its consolidated revenue grew 20.4% to TL 7.6 billion, while the firm gained 2.2 million new subscribers in the last 12 months to reach a total of 50.6 million.
The company's revenues surged 20% in 2020, the highest growth in the last 12 years.
Türk Telekom’s earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) rose 27.7% in the first quarter to TL 3.7 billion and the EBITDA margin came in at 50.1%.
The pandemic did not prevent its investment expenditures from surging 40% year-on-year in the January-March period to TL 1.3 billion.
The current environment has paved a way for an upward revision in 2021 forecasts, Türk Telekom CEO Ümit Önal said.
“In current terms, we forecast revenue growth of about 16%, EBITDA of about TL 15.4 billion and investment spending of about TL 8 billion,” Önal noted.
“With our investments, we will focus on expanding and improving our fixed and mobile networks, capacity building, the digital agenda, data centers and the transition to 5G.”
“Our country has spent another quarter under pandemic restrictions. We hope that we are rapidly approaching the end of these difficult times,” said the CEO.
“During this period, we focused on staying at the top of our business and working on our ambitious targets for sustainable strong growth,” he noted.
He said they have succeeded in turning the challenges of 2020 into great opportunities by prioritizing financial excellence and risk management, digitalization, efficiency and superior customer experience.
“We have added to our strength to achieve even better performance in 2021. In addition to our fixed and mobile business lines, we also outperformed our expectations in corporate data revenue growth this quarter,” Önal said.
