Ericsson shares fall after posting weaker-than-expected results
Ericsson shares fell 14% in trading after the equipment vendor posted its Q3 results.
Gross margin fell to 41.4% from 44% and was impacted by lower IPR revenues, supply chain costs and a larger share of services following footprint expansion in networks.
This is despite a 3% year-on-year rise in group organics sales and a rise in gross income.
The vendor adds that significant contracts have been signed and earlier signed contracts will continue to increase sales in Q4 and are expected to contribute with considerable volumes in 2023.
Börje Ekholm, president and CEO of Ericsson said: “In the current inflationary environment, we are making pricing adjustments as well as leveraging product substitution to manage margins.
“We are also simplifying operations across the company and will continue to be proactive in reviewing options to reduce costs, whilst continuing to develop best-in-class products and services.
“We are fundamentally strengthening cost competitiveness through an intense focus on internal end-to-end efficiency gains and structural costs.
AT&T continues subscriber growth despite revenue drop
Revenues from AT&T’s operations dropped to US$30 billion from US$31.3 billion, down 4.1% despite sustained subscriber growth.
The operator recorded 708,000 postpaid phone net additions, 2.2 million-plus through the third quarter, with 338,000 fibre net additions, representing its second-best quarter ever.
“We’re investing at record levels to enhance our 5G and fibre connectivity and to deliver the best experience available in the market,” said John Stankey, AT&T CEO.
“Our results show our strategy is resonating with customers as we continue to see robust levels of postpaid phone net adds and approach 1 million AT&T Fiber net adds for the year.
“Our disciplined go-to-market approach is helping drive healthy subscriber growth with high-quality customers.
“We remain confident in our ability to achieve, or surpass, all our financial commitments for the year, while still investing to bring our customers the industry’s best services.”
Telia Company reports revenue rise
Telia Company reported a 5.6% increase in net sales to SEK22.456 million as service revenues increased 5%.
Operating income in Q3 increased to SEK3.188 million while total net income amounted to SEK1.883 million.
“Telia’s third quarter results show continued commercial momentum with service revenue growing 2.3% and all our units delivering positive service revenue growth for the first time in several years,” Allison Kirkby, president and CEO of Telia Company said.
“Macroeconomic headwinds, however, strengthened from a breeze to a mild storm during the summer, with sharply higher energy prices and interest rates.
“In the quarter we were able to mitigate some of these headwinds and our resulting financial performance was positive, with cost efficiencies continuing and EBITDA growth of 1%."
China Telecom posts solid operating revenues
China telecom posted operating revenues of RMB360.982 million representing an increase of 9.6% from last year.
The company says this was led by continued improvement in 5G network coverage and the steady increase of user scale and value.
In the first three quarters of 2022, mobile communications service revenues amounted to RMB148,367 million, representing an increase of 5.6% over the same period of last year.
The total number of mobile subscribers reached approximately 390 million with a net addition of 17.46 million. The number of 5G package subscribers reached approximately 251 million with a net addition of 63.24 million, while the penetration rate reached 64.4%. The mobile ARPU amounted to RMB45.5.
America Movil adds 2.9 million wireless customers in Q3
America Movil added 2.9 million wireless subscribers in the third quarter, including 1.9 million postpaid clients with over half coming from Brazil.
In the prepaid segment the firm added one million subscribers and on the fixed line, 156,000.
Mobile service revenue rose more than 9% year-on-year and was the fastest rate of growth in five quarters.
“EBITDA expansion helped bring about a 5.2% increase in our operating profit to 43.6 billion pesos, resulting in an 18.0 billion pesos net profit in the quarter after 16.5 billion pesos in comprehensive financing costs that were 34.2% below that of the prior year mostly on account of foreign exchange losses incurred then,” the company added in its financial release.
