Batelco Growth and Batelco Operations in 2011
Ongoing growth of the Batelco network & overseas operations during 2011.
Manama, Bahrain: Adding further colour to Batelco Group’s (ticker: BATELCO) results in 2011, Shaikh Mohamed bin Isa Al Khalifa, Batelco Group CEO, presented highlights of Batelco Group’s financial and operating performance for the year to the General Assembly, emphasizing Batelco’s success in effectively balancing efforts to maintain market leadership at home whilst building its operations and scale in key growth markets overseas.
In line with a key pillar of our Batelco international strategy, we continued to add scale to our operations growing our subscriber base by 20% for the year to a record 11 million customers.
Shaikh Mohamed said: “Operationally we are proud of the performance of Batelco Group companies across the MENA region and India during 2011. In line with a key pillar of our Batelco international strategy, we continued to add scale to our operations growing our subscriber base by 20% for the year to a record 11 million customers. We are especially pleased with this result in light of challenging market conditions which impacted the entire MENA region during 2011 and in particular a number of key markets of operation for Batelco Group. With a continued focus on remaining innovative and competitive we maintained market leadership in Bahrain whilst also achieving growth in overseas markets where we have invested and from which we are now deriving even great gains and value.”
Additional key operation highlights for 2011 included growth of the total Batelco mobile customer base by 21% whilst broadband subscriber figures across the network increased by 8%. 2011 also saw Batelco Group achieve record contributions from overseas operations resulting from ongoing effective diversification of its operations geographically. For the year, 37% of revenues and 30% of operating profit were sourced from markets outside Bahrain. Year on year, this accounted for a 6% and 9% increase in revenues and operating profits, respectively, from operations at Batelco’s 96% owned subsidiary Umniah in Jordan and Qualitynet in Kuwait, where growth helped to partially offset some of the effects of intense competition in Bahrain. Further growth and progress was also seen in other Group joint ventures during 2011 with solid customer and revenue growth similarly delivered by Sabafon in Yemen, Atheeb in Saudi Arabia and STel in India.
This press release has been issued by Batelco Corporate Affairs department.
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