HT Revenue Grew 3.4 Percent in the First Half of 2021

Hrvatski Telekom closed the first half of 2021 on a positive note with a strong commercial performance, with revenue growth translating into solid EBITDA AL growth. The company said that maintaining the strong investment plan ensures continuation of positive trends and solid commercial momentum.

In 1H21, HT achieved solid growth with total consolidated net revenue, increasing by HRK 118 million or 3.4% year over year. The revenue increase was mainly driven by stronger mobile revenue (HRK 120 million or 7.8%), and fixed revenue (HRK 62 million or 3.9%), with partial offset coming from System solutions due to absence of one-time deal in 2020 and different seasonality of customized solutions deals (HRK -64 million or -16.6%). EBITDA AL was also up HRK 41 million or 3.2% in H1 2021 as a result of an increase reported in both HT Group in Croatia (3.3%) and Crnogorski Telekom (1.5%).

The EBITDA AL margin was 36.9%. Noteworthy development is that EBITDA AL continued growing for the third consecutive quarter supported by the positive commercial momentum. Net Profit contracted as improved EBITDA and lower taxation were insufficient to offset the increase in depreciation on yearly level, which stems from high investments during previous years, with investments amounting to over HRK 9 billion just over the last five years. However, on the quarterly level, depreciation decreased.

HT continued to focus on building its fiber-optic infrastructure and further expanded the fixed network with FTTH coverage reaching more than 387,000 households, which represents a notable 29% increase compared to the same period last year. Overall, their fiber-based access network (FTTx) was with the end of second quarteravailable to 552,000 households (21% YOY growth). At the same time, HT more than quadrupled the number of cities covered with 5G, with a total 76 cities and 11 municipality centers being covered, and almost doubled the population covered, now at a full 2 million. In the meantime, the company launched the first 5G roaming services.

„Regardless of the still present challenging macroeconomic environment, Hrvatski Telekom ended the first half of 2021 on a positive note, as continued revenue growth translated into solid EBITDA AL growth, which enabled us to develop our business further. We remained true to maintaining strong, market leading investments. We expanded further our fixed network enabling over 387,000 households to enjoy the fiber giga speeds. We quadrupled the number of cities covered with 5G compared to 2020, almost doubling the population covered to 2 million. And we confirmed our leading network status. We continued supporting our customers, raising our service quality even further, helping them transform and become more resilient and agile, supporting their growing ambition. The work we have done is clearly reflected in the best ever customer, and employee satisfactions in HT’s history. And these are the foundations on which we will continue building," said Kostas Nebis, CEO of Hrvatski Telekom.