Manama, Bahrain: Batelco Group (Ticker: BATELCO), the leading telecom in the Middle East of reference with operations across six countries, today announced its results for the first three months of the year ended 31 March 2012 ("the Period"). The first quarter was marked by continued market leadership in the Kingdom of Bahrain, its home market, and solid contributions from overseas markets especially from Jordan and Kuwait.

Further strengthening of its operations and positioning the Group to achieve growth in overseas markets remained a priority during the first three months of 2012. Towards this end, investments were made in a number of key markets, which the Group expects will impact positively on performance and growth going forward.

Jordan: The first quarter of 2012 saw significant strides made at Umniah, the Group’s 96% owned subsidiary in Jordan. In January, the Group completed an investment of JD50.0 M (US$70.0M) for a 3G licence for Umniah, which it is currently in the process of rolling out. The new service is scheduled to be launched nationwide in the third quarter of 2012 with 3.75G services ensuring the faster and more reliable transfer of data as well as providing subscribers with instant Multimedia Services (MMS). Umniah currently serves 2.3 million mobile customers. While this reflects a slight 1% decline since last quarter and growth of 3% year over year, investments in 3G are expected to both increase the top and bottom line over the coming periods. Additionally, Umniah also continued to show strong growth in its broadband subscriber base, which grew 10% since last quarter and an impressive 31% when compared to the corresponding period in 2011 due to growth in WiMax subscribers.

Further positive news during the quarter from Umniah was its first dividend payment to the Group and other shareholders of BD33.3M ( US$88.3M). This is further indication of the growing value of this investment and its strong future prospects.

Kuwait: Batelco’s subsidiary Qualitynet, which delivers total ICT solutions, maintained its market leadership in the first quarter as it continued to meet the Data Communications and Internet Services needs of the Kuwait market. For the quarter, the company’s customer base remained steady on both a quarterly and year-over-year basis at just over 40,000 subscribers.

Other JVs: Sabafon (Yemen) and Atheeb (Saudi Arabia), in which the Group has minority shareholdings, continued to work to enhance their market positions in order to deliver further profitable growth going forward. For the first quarter of 2012, Sabafon (Yemen) registered a 16% decline in its mobile customer base since last quarter and a 6% decrease year over year. The revised customer base resulted from operations in Sabafon returning to almost normal conditions following the marked reduction of conflict across Yemen. The customer base now reflects active customers and excludes sim cards which have not made or received calls in the last 90 days.  The Group Net Profit includes a one-off BD 2M adverse impact on account of share of Sabafon results relating to 2011 period.

Atheeb (Saudi Arabia), which now delivers voice and data services to approximately 111,000 customers, reported a 2% decrease to its subscriber base since last quarter and a 4% decrease year over year. Further strengthening of Atheeb’s operations and performance is nevertheless expected in 2012 with the recently completed SR1.2 billion capital increase undertaken by the company, which will see it embark upon a new strategic focus on the business sector where considerable opportunities and room for customer and revenue growth exist.

This press release has been issued by Batelco Corporate Affairs department.
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