Telia Lietuva 2020: best results achieved despite lockdowns

The country's largest telco, Telia Lietuva, ended the year 2020 with the best financial results it had achieved in the five years since the acquisition of Omnitel. Being the first to offer the 5G connectivity experience to Lithuanian people and businesses, Telia Lietuva received not only new customers, but also the historical attention of investors - the Company's capital value exceeded 1 billion for the first time.

'The year was extraordinary both globally and for Telia Lietuva - numerous challenges and restrictions in 2020 were replaced by new opportunities, customers, partners and huge focus on ensuring critical services under lockdown. The drastic but necessary travel restrictions had a negative impact on the telecommunications business due to the decline in roaming services, but remote work, education and the tremendous breakthrough in business digitisation meant only one thing to us: even better quality, more data, IT services, TV content and equipment,' says Dan Strömberg, CEO of Telia Lietuva. He is also the Vice-president of Telia Company responsible for Telia's activities in Estonia and Denmark.

Compared to 2019, annual revenue of Telia Lietuva went up by 2.5 per cent to EUR 398.1 million. The 12 months EBITDA increased by 4.7 per cent and reached EUR 134.9 million. The profit of the period augmented by 2.1 per cent to EUR 55.9 million during the last 12 months, while free cash flows remained almost unchanged - EUR 88.7 million.

During October-December 2020, Telia Lietuva revenue increased by 1.5 per cent to EUR 108.6 million compared to the last quarter of 2019. The quarterly EBITDA and net profit remained almost the same and stood at EUR 34.1 million and EUR 16.9 million, respectively.

During 2020, the price of the Company's shares rose by 43 per cent, and at the year-end the Company's market capitalisation exceeded EUR 1 billion for the first time in history. Since the acquisition of Omnitel on 4 January 2016, Telia Lietuva share price has increased twice to EUR 2.03 at the end of trading on 28 January 2021.

According to D. Strömberg, although Telia Lietuva showrooms were closed during lockdowns, the vast majority of nearly two thousand employees of the Company worked remotely and the installation and maintenance of new services went on without interruption.

In addition, Telia Lietuva has contributed to the fight against the consequences of coronavirus in Lithuania - the total value of its financial, service and equipment support exceeds EUR 400 thousand. The support was allocated to doctors fighting coronavirus, school computers and the development of an information robot for Covid-19 infected people. Telia has installed and still operates the main coronavirus hotline 1808.

Service indicators

New contracts for IT solutions with private companies and public sector organizations increased Telia Lietuva revenue from IT services by 23.1 per cent over the year, while the doubling of TV viewing intensity also led to 16.9 per cent growth in revenue from the most popular in Lithuania smart TV service. The annual growth rate of comparable revenue from mobile services was 5.6 per cent and of the equipment sales - 4.3 per cent.

During the second half of the year, the largest wave of new mobile service customers per year emerged - the number of pre-paid and post-paid customers increased by 29 thousand in the third quarter and by 14 thousand in the last quarter.

At the end of 2020, the number of mobile communication subscriptions of Telia Lietuva reached almost 1.4 million (3.8 per cent annual growth), the users of the smart TV service - 253 thousand (3.7 per cent annual growth) and the fibre-optic internet connections - about 300 thousand (0.7 per cent annual growth).

Remote communication, work and education have led to almost a double increase in mobile data traffic in Telia Lietuva network during the year; the calls' volume increased by 40 per cent and the share of calls using VoLTE technology increased almost twice to 44 per cent. Despite strong growth in volumes, according to measurements carried out by the Communications Regulatory Authority (CRA) in 2020, Telia Lietuva average mobile internet speed reached 85.06 Mbps exceeding by 30 per cent and 87 percent the comparable speed of the other two competitors, respectively. According to the latest data of the CRA, the average monthly amount of data used by one customer of Telia Lietuva was almost 20 GB.