Back to Press Releases Telefónica Germany
25.02.2011

Annual results 2010

O2 sees strong growth in sales and customers

A speaker icon, representing the "Read page aloud" feature
  • More than 1.68 million new customers in 2010
  • Operative group revenue rises organically by 7.9 percent compared to previous year
  • Turnaround achieved in DSL business of HanseNet
MUNICH. Telefónica O2 Germany's success story continues. In 2010, mobile phone and DSL customer numbers rose by more than 1.68 million, this is 22 percent more new customers as in 2009. The contribution of the fourth quarter was especially critical here - more than 505,000 new customers joined.
The year 2010 was characterised by a strong customer growth. This was predominantly achieved by simple, transparent tariff offers like O2 o and O2 Blue as well as by our extensive smartphone offer. At the end of last year Telefónica O2 Germany, which has included the DSL and communication provider HanseNet since 16 February 2010, had almost 19.6 million customers. This amounts to an increase of 24 percent compared to the previous year. The number of mobile communications customers soared to 17.05 million - an increase of 1.54 million compared to the previous year. Almost half of these (8.25 million) are contract customers. The number of prepaid customers jumped by 12.7 percent to 8.8 million, to which especially the cooperation partners like Fonic, Tchibo and Schlecker contributed. The DSL business of HanseNet profits from the successful integration of the two companies and achieved turnaround in the third quarter. Together the DSL business rose by 140,000 to 2.53 million customers. The company generated an overall revenue of 4.83 billion Euros in 2010. Hence, compared to the previous year it grew organically* by 7.9 percent and inorganically by 28.9 percent. The adjusted OIBDA continued to improve too: it rose by 23.5 percent compared to the year before and reached 1.145 billion Euros. This was predominantly facilitated by rising gross margins and falling costs.
"The integration of O2 and HanseNet will be completed on 1 April 2011 as planned," René Schuster, CEO of Telefónica O2 Germany notes. "It's an impressive achievement that we are on such a growth course despite of our outlays for the integration of HanseNet and the company's restructuring." Since 2006, Telefónica has invested about seven billion Euros in Germany - amongst others in the extension of network and sale as well as in the development of new products. This investment program will continue in 2011. The deployment of networks for the commercial use of LTE has already begun; the launch of O2 LTE products for customers is planned for the first half of the year.
"Telefónica O2 Germany is on path of growth," explained CFO André Krause. "The last quarter of the year produced the strongest customer growth of the whole year." The number of customers rose from October to December by more than 505,000. This is 30.3 percent more than in the preceding quarter. Revenue increased in these three months by 5.8 percent compared to the previous quarter, while the adjusted OIBDA grew by 2.3 percent. More and more customers integrate the mobile internet in their everydays' lives and use data products in the network of O2. Therefore, in the fourth quarter more than 90 percent of the mobile phone buyers at O2 chose smartphones, especially caused by the successful introduction of the iPhone. Therefore the data revenue (without SMS) in 2010 soared by 31 percent compared to the previous year.
Business Development 2010
The average monthly revenue (Average Revenue per user - ARPU) of pre-paid customers rose by 7.8 percent compared to the previous year. In contrast the post-paid ARPU decreased by 8.8 percent. Since the launch of O2 My Handy the hardware revenue is not longer assigned to the ARPU. Apart from the cut in the termination fee, this reflects in the declining ARPU. "The reduction of the termination fee already had a considerable effect on our result growth in the fourth quarter," André Krause explains. "The mobile service revenue in Q4 rose by 2.6 percent compared to the previous year - without this effect it even increased by 4.9 percent." At December 1, the Federal Network Agency cut the termination fee by half.
*organically: Telefónica O2 Germany without HanseNet Telefónica O2 Germany GmbH & Co. OHG belongs to Telefónica Europe and is part of the Spanish telecommunication group Telefónica S.A. The Company offers its German private and business customers postpaid and prepaid mobile telecom products as well as innovative mobile data services based on the GPRS and UMTS technologies. In addition, the integrated communications provider also offers DSL fixed network telephony and high-speed internet. Telefónica Europe has about 55 million mobile and fixed network customers in Great Britain, Ireland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Germany.