O2 Ireland has announced a 13% rise in service revenues for the year ending March 31, 2005. Service revenues grew from €816m from €720m the same time last year.
Turnover for the full year amounted to €859m, up 13% from €762m last year, while EBITDA was up 9% to €327m from €300m last year. O2 said its customer base grew by 10% during the year from 1.3 million to 1.5 million.
Irish customers continued to be among the company's biggest contributors to profits. Minutes of usage on the O2 Ireland network increased for the full year to 209 minutes a month, up from 197 minutes a month to the end of March 2004.
In comparison, O2 UK customers spend 137 minutes per month on their mobile phones while O2 Germany customers spend 118 minutes talking on their mobiles on average each month.
The number of text messages sent during 2004/2005 increased by 13% to 1.351 billion from 1.193 billion in the previous 12 month period.
In the fourth quarter, O2 said that blended Average Revenue Per User grew to €565 from €559 last year. Pre-pay ARPU was steady at €358 and post-pay ARPU grew to €1,118 from €1,106. A total of 363 million text messages were sent in the three months from January to March. That compared with 343 million in the previous quarter.
During the year to the end of March, O2 said its capital expenditure rose to €145m from €73m the previous year. The company announced a roaming agreement with Meteor and also signed a deal with Japan's NTT DoCoMo which will see the arrival of i-mode later this year.
'02 Ireland delivered a strong performance for the year, driven by a combination of exceptional customer growth and increased levels of usage across both voice and data services,' commented CEO Danuta Gray.
'We are very pleased with our performance and intend to build on this success going forward,' she added.
O2 Ireland's parent group - O2 - today unveiled its first full-year dividend as it said annual profits had more than tripled.
The company said it was proposing to pay shareholders an inaugural final dividend of 2.25 pence per share.
It said a 16% rise in customers to 23.96 million had helped it rack up annual pre-tax profits of £309m sterling in the year to March 31 against £95m last time.
O2 said group revenues grew by 18.4% to £6.7 billion and operating profits were up 73.6% to £755m against £435m last time. It said it had reduced its group net debt by £288m to £78m.
