The Mobistar group posts 4 % growth in its mobile customer base and an increase of 1.4 % in its revenues except regulation

Brussels, 23 October 2012 – Today, Mobistar (Euronext Brussels: MOBB) publishes its results for the first nine months of 2012. These results are in line with the forecasts, despite the impact of the regulation on the turnover and EBITDA of the Mobistar group. The new Animals mobile subscriptions, launched last April, already convinced 335,000 customers by the end of September 2012. During the course of the third quarter of 2012, Mobistar also launched several initiatives designed to better serve its customers, and the improvement of the fixed lines activation process will allow Mobistar to relaunch its commercial efforts in this segment during the fourth quarter of 2012. These different initiatives made it possible to partially offset the impact of the reduction in the roaming and mobile termination rates, which amounts to 41.6 million euros on the consolidated turnover and 21.5 million euros on the EBITDA of the group for the first nine months of 2012. During the meeting of 19 October,  the Board of Directors decided to reorient the IT modernisation programme so as to better adapt it to the market evolutions. This reorientation will give rise to accelerated depreciations of the IT infrastructure involved for a gross amount of at most 20 million euros in the fourth quarter of 2012. The Mobistar group maintains its forecasts for the 2012 financial year, except for the accounting impact of these accelerated depreciations on the net result only and without impact on the cash flow.   

Key facts:

During the third quarter of 2012, the Mobistar group continued to make progress on its four strategic priorities: strengthening its leadership on the mobile market, developing convergent services that are accessible everywhere and at all times, offering the best customer experience on the market, and managing the costs of the company with the greatest possible efficiency.   

• The Animals mobile subscriptions launched last April, which meet the real needs of Belgian consumers and leave them free to choose whether or not to sign a contract, are producing results. At the end of the third quarter of 2012, Mobistar had a total of 335,000 Animals subscriptions. The number of active mobile telephony customers of the Mobistar group increased by 4 % between the end of the third quarter of 2011 and the end of the third quarter of 2012, rising from 4,150,719 customers to 4,316,113 customers. Mobistar prepared the company to welcome the new telecom law which, since October 1st, permits mobile customers to join Mobistar without delay or penalty.
  
  At the end of September 2012, Mobistar launched the iPhone 5 in Belgium, in combination with the “iSwap” programme. This new approach aims for a better customer experience and has proven to be a great success. The customers can thus register to purchase an iPhone 5 and at the same time verify their tariff plan in order to fully benefit from all of the functionalities of their smartphone. Thousands of customers signed up within a single week.
  
  The success of the iPhone 5 launch and the experience acquired in the area of combined offers during the summer, confirms Mobistar’s analysis that only a very limited market segment is interested in these kind of offers in Belgium.
  
  Finally, Mobistar launched a new prepaid mobile data offer: Internet On Mobile, available exclusively on the Internet, and anticipated the evolution in the needs of the mobile market, notably by proposing an unlimited offer for only 60 euros per month: Panther Unlimited.
• Following the launch of the 4G pilot project in Antwerp in July 2012, Mobistar began in September the official tests of its 4G network. During this testing period, some residential and business customers can surf via their mobile at speeds up to 10 times faster than on the 3G network. For its part, Orange Communications Luxembourg proceeded with the pre-commercial launch of its 4G network in Luxembourg City last September 25th.
  
  Following the decision of the Court of Appeal dismissing the suspension request submitted by Telenet, the file on the opening up of cable has begun to move more quickly. The IBPT confirmed the opening of Belgacom´s multicast offer to alternative operators. Mobistar awaits with great interest the publication of regulated offers in the coming weeks and is already preparing itself to offer its services on other fixed accesses. Since then, Mobistar has revised its internal line activation processes and its new “à la carte“ offers of fixed services will form the object of new commercial actions in the fixed lines segment during the course of the fourth quarter of 2012.
• Investment in the “Happy Customer” programme continues. The latest development in the programme is the creation of a customer test centre, where Mobistar allows its customers to test the new products and services before they are put on the market. Here they can also share their customer experience from the purchase of the new product until receipt of the invoice. Mobistar has also undertaken a systematic simplification of its customer processes.
• The first actions of the new transformation programme, named ACE (Agility - Cost - Efficiency) and which seeks to achieve at least 100 million euros additional savings between 2013 and 2015, have been launched. They already produced the first positive results during the third quarter of 2012.

Full press release (PDF)