Vodafone Romania – more customers, but service revenues are declining at end-March

Vodafone Romania had 8,651,985 customers (including mobile services users, fixed voice and Internet users and m2m) at end-March, representing an increase of 47,416 users, as compared to previous quarter. Out of the total number of customers, 8,056,278 were mobile customers, according to key performance indicators for the fiscal year 2014-2015, from April 1, 2014 to March 31, 2015, as reported Tuesday by Vodafone Group Plc.

“We have ended a very good year, during which we have reached several important milestones: our focus on mobile data adoption and smartphone penetration, as well as our network quality, ramping up 4G customer base that grew more than 10 times, during the last year. In addition, our 4G network now covers Bucharest and all the 41 capitals, and has also extended to the most important cities across Romania, a development that led to 4G data traffic increasing more than 10 times,” Ravinder Takkar, President and CEO, Vodafone Romania said in a press release.

Vodafone Romania’s Mobile ARPU reached Euro 6 over the last 3 months.

Service revenues for the full year 2014-2015 reached EUR 656.6 million, decreasing by 6.7 percent compared to last year, on an organic basis. Excluding the effect of the mobile termination rate cut, service revenues for the full year 2014-2015 increased by 7.2 percent, also on an organic basis.

At end-March, mobile postpaid customers represented 41.9 percent, and prepaid customers 58.1 percent of the total mobile base. Mobile postpaid base as a percentage of total mobile base increased by 1.3 percentage points as compared to same period of last year.

Data usage increased by 75.6 percent for the year ended March 31st, 2015, compared to last year.

Smartphone penetration increased by 5.7 percentage points in the year ended March 31st, 2015, compared to last year, with smartphone sales increasing by 49 percent compared to last year.