By Pratap John
Chief Business Reporter


Vodafone Qatar closed the first full year of “positive distributable profit” in March, which also saw the service provider’s earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) going up 97% to QR284mn.
Since the “positive distributable profit” in March totalled only QR2mn, the service provider would “reinvest” it in its “growing business” in the country, said outgoing Vodafone Qatar CEO Richard Daly.
Announcing Vodafone’s financial results for the year ending on March 31 yesterday Daly said the year had seen a 30% growth in the mobile customer base, which stood at 1.08mn in the period under review.
On the back of increasing customer base, Vodafone Qatar posted a 25% increase in revenue, year-on-year to QR1.53bn.
“We continued to deliver solid growth in our third full year of operations with strong revenue growth of 25% over the year to reach QR1.5bn driven primarily from the mobile business.  As a result, our share of the mobile revenue in Qatar grew to 27.4% for the year, up from 24.5% last year.
“This growth provided a solid foundation for improving our profitability this year.
“This has led to an improvement in our EBITDA margin of seven percentage points over the year to reach 19%.  In turn this has enabled us to achieve the very important milestone of our first full year of positive distributable profit of QR2mn.”
Vodafone Qatar chief financial officer Steve Walters said the average revenue per user (ARPU) improved 8% to QR121 in the year that ended in March.  
He said Vodafone had a capital expenditure of QR300mn in the year that ended in March; an investment primarily made in improving the quality, coverage and data speed of the mobile network.
On the fixed line, Vodafone Qatar invested QR92mn last year, Walters said.
In a presentation at the Grand Hyatt Vodafone said the service provider’s “strong financial performance” last year were because of a growth in customer numbers, uptake of mobile data services driven by huge smartphone usage, launch of post-paid service and expansion of the company’s international roaming footprint to more than 190 markets.
In 2012, Vodafone connected its first fixed line customers offering both voice and high speed broadband capabilities. The company now serves many residents of Barwa City and also a number of businesses in West Bay and within Qatar Foundation.
“We are very proud to be partnering with Qnbn (Qatar National Broadband Network) supporting the Government’s initiative to provide superfast broadband to 95% of households by 2015.
“Our range of services is now ready to be rolled out and we look forward to Qnbn expanding their ‘last-mile’ network throughout 2013 to enable us to provide a competitive offering to many more households and companies across the country,” Daly said.
He also said Vodafone plans to launch ultra-fast 4G LTE service in Qatar by the year-end of early 2014.

New CEO set to take over
Vodafone’s Qatar new CEO Kyle Whitehill said he would continue the work done by his predecessors to bring value to customers and shareholders in the country.
Whitehill, who was formally introduced to the local media yesterday, would take over from Ricard Daly, who leaves Doha this month.
Whitehill will join Vodafone Qatar from Ghana, where he has been CEO of the company since 2010.  
He has worked for Vodafone Group since 2001 and previously held senior positions, including Enterprise Business Unit Director in the UK and chief operating officer in India.