Mobile phone group O2, which has agreed to a £17.7 billion sterling takeover from Spain's Telefonica, said its total Irish revenues for the six months to the end of September grew by 14% to €475m from €418m the same time last year.
Service revenues grew to €451m from €401m the same time last year, while earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation rose by 11% to €177m.
O2 said the growth was driven by both new customer acquisitions and increasing Average Revenue Per User figures. O2's Irish customer base grew by 10.2% to 1.57 million for the six months to the end of September. Almost 27% of these were contract customers.
O2 said its ARPU here grew by 2.1% to €572 for the three months from July to the end of September. This compares to a figure of €349 in Germany and a figure of £271 in the UK.
O2 said that average minutes of usage per month increased to 215, up 12 minutes from 204 minutes in the same time last year. For an O2 UK customer, it was 144 minutes per month while for an O2 Germany customer it was 114 minutes a month.
The number of text messages sent in the first six months of the year increased by 12% to 720 million from 644 million the same time last year.
The company said its full year result is expected to deliver further service revenue growth and a broadly stable EBITDA margin.
'The O2 Ireland business continues to deliver a strong performance driven by our commitment to ongoing innovation, increased investment and value for money,' commented Danuta Gray, O2 Ireland's CEO.
'We continue to innovate in the market and the launch of our high speed mobile interest access service i-mode in October this year is set to transform Ireland's performance in this vital area,' she added.
Its UK-based parent said today that its half year earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation rose by 15% to £975m on 12% higher revenues of £3.615 billion. The outcome was better than had been expected.
The company said its customer base grew by 17% to 25.7 million. Underlying earnings per share jumped to a higher than expected 5.4 pence. It also confirmed its half year dividend of 1.54 pence per share.
