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Sasko Lazarov/Photocall Ireland
# fibre to the rescue
High-speed broadband could be Eircom's saviour
The company has slowed the long-term slide in its revenues.
EIRCOM HAS STEMMED the near-terminal decline in its revenue with growth in the company’s mobile and broadband businesses partially making up for the mass exodus of fixed-line phone customers.
The former state telecoms provider said its revenue for the most-recent quarter was down slightly on the same time last year but the rate of decline “continues to improve”.
The company took in €311 million for the three months while it also continued to trim operating costs - included taking a 17% slice out of its pay bill.
Eircom said it added 18,000 broadband customers in total over the period with 40,000 extra clients joining its high-speed fibre network.
That network had now passed over 1.2 million premises, or over 50% of the country’s total, meaning about 20% of those with access to its fibre offering had signed up for the service.
Revenue from the company’s mobile business was also up 5% to €87 million, 28% of its total income, after it added 9,000 postpaid customers for the quarter.
The bad news
Despite the pick-up in some parts of its trade, Eircom’s total revenue continues to drop as thousands of fixed-line customers ditched the provider each month.
It lost 21,000 clients on retail lines over the past three months and 66,000 compared to the same time in 2014.
The company has also cut about 30% from its staff numbers with full-time equivalent headcount falling from 4,929 to 3,430 for the latest quarter.
Its earnings before deductions were up 8% to €120 million over the past three months, but figures for the same period in 2014 suffered from one-off storm-related costs.
Eircom CEO Richard Moat said the results were “highly encouraging” with the company’s revenues stabilising and its fibre broadband rollout continuing “at pace”.
The company, which was recently rated one of Ireland five least-favourite businesses, also said it had trimmed its number of open complaints from over 1,000 six months ago to less than 150.
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