During the last year T-Mobile gained 358 thousand clients, out of which 100 thousand during the second quarter of 2018. Good operational results are accompanied by rising customer satisfaction which is reflected in positive MNP balance and the churn rate lowest since 2012.
In the second quarter of 2018 T-Mobile gained 78 thousand contract clients and 22 thousand prepaid clients. In result, by the end of the first half of the year T-Mobile served 10.609M clients.
Over the last year we concentrated on the highest quality of customer service and customer experience. Today, we can clearly see the positive results of this approach. The reflection of rising customer satisfaction and the fact that the customers come back to us and stay for good can be clearly seen in the company’s good operational results – said Andreas Maierhofer, CEO of T-Mobile Polska. We will continue with this strategy and at the same time we are developing our service portfolio in order to offer the clients a complete variety of mobile and fixed services for their homes in the first quarter of 2019 at the latest.
Churn at the lowest level since 2012
According to satisfaction surveys clients give the highest scores to T-Mobile’s quality of service, especially data transfer speeds, coverage, customer service, trustworthiness and pricing policy. This influences the resignation ratio (churn), which in the contract segment is on a level of 0.9%. This result means improvement over the corresponding quarter of 2017, when it was 1.1%. The last time such low contract resignation ratio could be observed in T-Mobile was in the third quarter of 2012. The improvement can also be noticed in the mobile number portability (MNP). In the second quarter T-Mobile lost the lowest number of customers to date, at the same time gaining over 87 thousand clients porting from all the other networks and finished the quarter with a positive balance of 6 thousand SIM cards.
Stable revenues in first half of year despite RLAH regulation
T-Mobile kept the revenue on stable level as compared to the equivalent period of the last year. In the second quarter of 2018 the operator reached revenue of 1,566M PLN (-1.8% y-o-y decline solely driven by effect of RLAH regulation), and in the whole first half of the year a revenue of 3,135M PLN, which is basically stable compared to the first half of 2017.
The 2Q2018 EBITDA amounted to 432M PLN and in the whole first half of 2018 it reached 834M PLN. In comparison to the second quarter last year EBITDA is down 17.7% and in comparison to the first half of 2018 it decreased by 12.9% significantly driven by lower revenues and at the same time higher cost reflecting RLAH regulation. Excluding negative impact, the EBITDA for the first half of 2018 went down by 4.6%.
The EBITDA result is largely an effect of a short-term increase in indirect costs, such as investments in the expansion and revitalization of the sales network or improvement of the quality of customer service – said Juraj Andras, CFO of T-Mobile Polska. The completion of investment projects will result in improvement of cost-efficiency, which in combination with stable revenues and good operational result is expected to improve in the upcoming quarters.
The network suited to clients’ needs
In the second quarter T-Mobile initiated the process of changing the network resources utilization model. In accordance with the agreement concluded with Orange both companies ceased sharing the 900Hz frequencies. Currently T-Mobile is the sole entity to use the frequencies belonging to the company, which translates to larger network capacity but has also enabled launching 200 base stations serving 3G in the east of Poland. At the same time the second project covered by the agreement is being implemented – the termination of 1800MHz frequency sharing. So far the works have been initiated in 5 out of 12 cities and completion of the project in all of the major Polish cities has been scheduled for the end of the year.
In the beginning of the year T-Mobile tested the possibility of readapting a part of the 2100HHz spectrum for LTE purposes. After reaching satisfactory result T-Mobile started rolling out LTE2100 network in urban locations, reaching almost 1100 such sites by the end of the first half of the year. These changes are aimed at meeting growing customer’s needs. Each quarter T-Mobile’s clients transfer greater amounts of data in the LTE network.
T-Mobile has been following the strategy adapted in 2017 which revolves around transitioning from a mobile operator to becoming a supplier of convergent services. The next steps observed by the strategy consisted of introduction of an FMS offer and lately signing a contract for the lease of optical fibers from Orange. Currently, technical preparations are underway, the finale of which will be launching T-Mobile's full fixed offer.
The company further develops new business opportunities based on the current technologies. In June T-Mobile signed an agreement with the city of Kazimierz Dolny which enable a construction of the first smart city in Poland. Appropriate preparations are already underway. At the same time PEC Geotermia Podhalańska S.A. is to become the first company to deploy a complex telemetric infrastructure solution supplied by T-Mobile in cooperation with the ABARO company based in the NBIoT technology.