Neotel, South Africa’s first converged communications network operator, has announced that the business grew 21% year-on-year and turned profitable before tax (PBT) positive for the first time since its inception seven years ago.
The company also announced a 21% increase in revenue compared to the same period last year, while EBITDA (Earnings before Interest, Tax, Depreciation and Amortisation) rose 105% year-on-year.
“We are proud of this performance and could only achieve these results with the support from our valued customers and our energised staff,” says Sunil Joshi, MD & CEO of Neotel. “The plan was to turn EBITDA positive in FY12 – Team Neotel did this. Then we set a target of being EBIT positive in FY13 – Neotel did this too. Now we have achieved our target of being PBT positive - ahead of plan.”
Neotel grew revenue across all its business units, including Managed Services (125%), Network Services (10%), NeoVoice (24%) and NeoInternet and NeoBroadband (20%). This has resulted in sustained customer services growth of 27% in the Small Enterprise/Retail segment and 24% in the Business segment.
Neotel did not comment on the exclusive discussions with Vodacom regarding a potential acquisition of the company, apart from reiterating that the finalisation of the transaction is subject to the successful conclusion of commercial negotiations and receiving the requisite approvals.
Neotel launched its LTE powered by NeoBroadband solution in late Q2 and is also seeing demand for data growth.
Neotel is 68.5% owned by Tata Communications.
