As its fibre footprint grows Eir is predicting low single digit bottom line growth for the full financial year
Telecoms operator Eir has reported its third consecutive quarter of revenue growth with Q2 revenues up 4pc to €328m.
The company said that more than 1.4m homes in Ireland can now receive 100Mbps broadband.
Eir’s EBITDA was up 4pc year-on-year to €117m. Eir’s CFO Huib Costermans said that Eir is predicting low single digit bottom line growth for the full financial year.
During the quarter, Eir, the operator formerly known as Eircom, acquired Setanta Sports to boost its TV offerings, just as rivals like Vodafone also enter the TV business.
Eir reported that it now has 817,000 broadband customers, up 19,000 in the quarter.
It said that 44pc of network broadband connections are high-speed broadband.
‘We remain fully committed and on target to deliver our promise to reach 1.9m premises by 2020, many of which will have access to speeds of up to 1,000Mbps’
– RICHARD MOAT, EIR
The company’s Eir Vision TV service now has 45,000 customers, representing a 24pc take-up by its consumer fibre customer base.
On the mobile front, Eir said it has passed the milestone of 500,000 post-pay mobile subscribers, some 46pc of its base of almost 1.1m customers. It said that some 348,000 customers are 4G users and that the average data usage for prepay customers exceeded 1Gbps for the first time.
Eir said that 18pc of its overall customer base are subscribing to triple and quad play bundles and that there were on average two revenue-generating units per household.
Eir’s digital transformation
“During the quarter we announced the acquisition of Setanta Sports Ireland,” said Eir CEO Richard Moat.
“This is a transformational opportunity for the business. It is part of our overall drive to offer great value and exciting services to our customers. Against the backdrop of a highly competitive market, the acquisition will deliver bottom line benefit in the future. This is subject to the necessary formal approvals, which are expected later in the financial year.”
Moat said that Eir’s network investment continues as planned. “There are now 1.4 million premises that can access high-speed broadband with speeds of up to 100Mbps via our open-access network. We remain fully committed and on target to deliver our promise to reach 1.9 million premises by 2020, many of which will have access to speeds of up to 1,000Mbps.”
Moat added that the Government’s National Broadband Plan has entered the pre-qualification phase and that Eir is working on a “compelling submission”.
We reported last month that, despite the National Broadband Plan’s mission of connecting the last 750,000 homes and businesses that can’t receive quality broadband, Eir is pressing ahead with its own complementary plan to add 300,000 premises in broadband-deprived areas that could see targets reached sooner.
The plan will bring to 1.9m the number of homes and businesses in Ireland that could have fibre broadband services via Eir’s network by 2020.
Broadband image via Shutterstock
