Digi increases its income by 24% compared to the general sluggishness of the sector | Companies

Digi leads its own pace in the competitive Spanish telecommunications market. While the three giants – Telefónica, Masorange and Vodafone – struggle to barely maintain their turnover, the Romanian operator’s income soars quarter after quarter. And they do it precisely at the cost of snatching customers from their competitors with their almost unbeatable fiber and mobile rates. In the first three months of 2024, Digi had a turnover of 178 million euros in Spain, which is 24% more than the same period of the previous year and closed the first quarter with a gross profit (Ebitda) of more than 40 million, which which represents 46% more.

The increase of the Balkan operator in the Spanish market has nothing to do with the apathy shown in the accounts of its rivals. Between January and March, Telefónica Spain’s revenue increased by 1% while ebitda barely rose 0.2%. For its part, Vodafone Spain reduced its billing by 2.9% in that period (corresponding to its last fiscal quarter ), while income for the year as a whole fell 1.6%. MásMóvil and Orange have not yet presented their first quarter accounts after completing their merger at the end of March. In the whole of last year, the former increased its revenue from telecommunications services by 6.2% (2.9% total revenue) while Orange increased its total revenue by 1.1% in 2023.

Digi’s strength is due to the continuous increase in its customer base, most of which come from the portfolio of its rivals, who choose to switch to the low-cost operator taking advantage of the free portability procedure (change of company while maintaining the phone number). Digi added more than 546,000 customers in the first quarter of 2024, which represents an increase of 32% compared to the same period of the previous year. In this way, the company surpasses the barrier of 7 million (7,027,000). Of them, more than 5 million customers had mobile telephone service, more than 1.5 million with fiber service and more than 496,000 with fixed telephone service at the end of March, adding more than 343,000, 152,000 and 51,000 clients, respectively, in the first quarter of the year. And only in the first quarter of 2024, it achieved 355,700 ports, of which more than 208,500 were mobile telephony, 22% more compared to what they achieved during the first three months of last year.

And despite this push that reduces the accounts of their rivals, they have no choice but to raffle off their favors. The Romanian operator was the first to benefit from the conditions (remedys) that the European Commission imposed on MásMóvil and Orange to authorize their merger, with advantageous conditions for access to its network and transfer of 5G frequencies. And Telefónica has just announced the renewal of the wholesale agreement through which it lends Movistar’s mobile network to Digi and which represents annual revenues of 300 million. In addition, Digi continues its deployment of its own network with investments of more than 75 million euros until March, continuing with its plan to deploy state-of-the-art ultra-fast fiber optic networks. And while the other companies reduce staff, the Romanian company is the only one that creates jobs. In the first quarter it has hired more than 250 professionals and has a staff of 7,750 employees.

Globally, Digi, whose main market is Romania, recorded a net profit of 25.6 million euros during the first quarter of this year, more than double that achieved a year earlier, while reaching revenues of 445, 3 million, 12.7% more.

Follow all the information Five days in Facebook, x and Linkedinor in our newsletter Five Day Agenda