Telecoms firm Eir has recorded its first year of annual revenue growth since 2008.
Eir saw revenue rise by 4% to €1.3 billion over the 12 months to the end of June.
Earnings, before interest tax and depreciation charges, were up 5% to €505m.
Eir CEO Richard Moat said: “We’ve had great growth in broadband, but a lot of it has come through our wholesale division.
“The important thing is we’re really pleased with these results overall ... we’re clearly on a sustainable trend here and looking for to the future with some confidence.”
On recent price increases in Eir’s wholesale broadband prices, Mr Moat said: “We are making significant investments in our infrastructure – particularly high-speed broadband – and obviously all of the other operators are taking the benefit of that.
“So I think that in terms of the prices we charge, given the service we provide, we’re offering great value for money.”
Mr Moat said this would not necessarily result in higher prices for consumers, given the firms bundled packages, which he described as being excellent value.
On plans for Eir following the acquisition of Setanta Sports earlier this year, the Eir CEO said: “We’re looking all the time about how we can expand the content we have and in particular we’re in negotiations with respective GAA content at the moment.
“As each new set of rights comes up, we’re going to be evaluating those and deciding which ones we go for”. He added “we’re very ambitious in this area”.
MORNING BRIEFS:
Currency movements have hit Fyffes' banana business according to first half results published this morning.
Strengthening of the dollar against both sterling and the euro over the period created challenging trading conditions, the company says.
Fyffes has hiked its prices but the company said this has not been enough to offset the impact of adverse currency movement.
Fyffes reported a 15% rise in revenue to €739m over the six-month period, however, pre-tax profit was almost €5m higher at €35.6m.
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Figures from the Bank of International Settlements indicate global currency trading volumes may have fallen for the first time since 2001.
The BIS does its survey every three years in April and has just published the latest results.
$5.1 trillion of global currencies were traded each day on average during April 2016, compared with $5.3 trillion at the time of the last survey in 2013.
Almost 90% of those trades involved the US dollar which remains the dominant currency.
The BIS figures suggest smaller banks have reduced their exposure to foreign currency since the financial crisis and their cross border activity as they have retrenched to cut costs since the recession, reducing the volume of currency trading.
