Brazil's Vivo See Profits Jump on Lower Debt Costs

­Brazilian mobile network operator, Vivo Participacoes saw its 3rd quarter net profit jump by 154% to R$ 340 million (US$197 million), largely due to lower borrowing costs. Revenues were up by 4% to R$ 3.79 billion (US$2.2 billion).

EBITDA margin in the quarter of 34.4%, a growth of 1.9 percentile points over 3Q08, and 4.0 percentile points over 2Q09. EBITDA reached R$ 1,404.3 million in the quarter, a growth of 6.0% in comparison with 3Q08.

In 3Q09, Vivo managed to attracted just over 2 million new customers, representing 31.2% in share of net additions. When compared to 3Q08, growth in net additions was 10.1%. In September, Vivo's customer base reached 48.85 million customers, increasing its general market share to 29.4% and post-paid market share to 31.4%. The GSM/WCDMA operation recorded more than 39.4 million subscribers, representing 80.7% of the total customer base.

The customer base grew 15.5% in the quarter when compared to the same period of last year.

Vivo originated from the merger of several Brazilian mobile phone operations under a joint-venture owned equally by Portugal Telecom and Spain's Telefónica.

Posted to the site on 5th November 2009