The Board of Telia Lietuva, AB (hereinafter "Telia Lietuva" or "the Company") approved unaudited Telia Lietuva, AB Interim Financial Statements, prepared according to International Financial Reporting Standards as adopted by the European Union, for 9 months' period ended 30 September 2024.
Third quarter of 2024 (compared with the same period a year ago):
- Revenue went down by 1% and amounted to EUR 121.6 million (2023: EUR 122.8 million)
- Adjusted EBITDA up by 0.9% to EUR 46.5 million (2023: EUR 46.1 million)
- EBITDA increased by 0.5% and amounted to EUR 45.7 million (2023: EUR 45.4 million)
- Profit for the period went down by 5.3% to EUR 17.5 million (2023: EUR 18.5 million)
- Free cash flow went up by 32.7% and amounted to EUR 32.7 million (2023: EUR 24.7 million)
9 months of 2024 (compared with the same period a year ago):
- Revenue grew by 1.9% and amounted to EUR 360.1 million (2023: EUR 353.3 million)
- Adjusted EBITDA up by 4.7% to EUR 135.2 million (2023: EUR 129.1 million)
- EBITDA increased by 4.8% and amounted to EUR 133.0 million (2023: EUR 126.9 million)
- Profit for the period went up by 7.2% to EUR 53.9 million (2023: EUR 50.3 million)
- Free cash flow went up by 42.4% and amounted to EUR 84.4 million (2023: EUR 59.3 million)
Comment by Giedre Kaminskaite-Salters, CEO of Telia Lietuva:
In September, our largest shareholder, Telia Company, made some adjustments to the Group strategy. The updated strategy, as launched, is an ambitious plan with clear priorities for the coming three years. This plan guides all the Group members in where we invest, where we accelerate, how we prioritize and how we can generate the most benefits for all our stakeholders.
While Telia's purpose, "We reinvent better connected living", remains at the core of everything we do, the updated strategy introduces a clear set of priorities to make Telia even more successful over the coming years, namely, to Simplify, Innovate and Grow our business.
Telia will stive to be #1 or #2 in the Nordic and Baltic markets where it operates by inspiring customer experience, network and technology quality, and being a trusted and sustainable partner. The ultimate goal of our efforts is to have loyal customers, engaged employees, empowered societies and satisfied shareholders.
Telia Company has also announced a change program that is set to simplify its operations in the Nordic and Baltic countries. The more decentralised and streamlined organisation will focus on local customers' needs, while the Group intends to reduce its number of personnel by 3,000 during the full year of 2024.
The announced change of the Group business model gives us an opportunity to make strategically necessary decisions in Lithuania, the benefits of which we will see in the nearest future. Digitizing the business, decommissioning legacy systems, harnessing the breakthrough of artificial intelligence (AI) and attracting the best talent is our path to becoming an industry leader.
Unfortunately, growing investment and talent retention also drives demand to optimize the number of employees: by the year end Telia Lietuva is planning to reduce it by 200.
Talks with Telia Lietuva's trade unions were completed by mid-October, and a new organizational structure with fewer personnel will come into effect from December 2024. The Company's restructuring charges of the change program are expected to amount to approximately EUR 1 million, with expected annual savings of EUR 6.3 million.
Over the year our service revenue for the third quarter of 2024 went up by 2.9 per cent, despite the big one-time connectivity and IT project implemented in July 2023, namely the NATO summit in Vilnius. Service revenue for 9 months of 2024 increased by 4.2 per cent, while equipment sales decreased by 6.5 per cent compared with the same period a year ago.
We aim to make life more interesting for everyone, and digital literacy will allow our customers to make the most of our services. We know how important it is for seniors to embrace modern technology; therefore, this July, we invited our senior customers to visit Telia Lietuva customer care units every week - during the hours reserved exclusively for them. In the course of free, customised lessons, seniors had the opportunity to learn how to use smartphones, tablets and other modern devices, and to ask questions.
Diversity and inclusion are also important to us. In order to accelerate our work on equal opportunities, acceptance of otherness, freedom to be yourself and contribute to the success of our society even more smoothly and efficiently, we joined the Lithuanian Diversity Charter.
Our ambitious environmental goals and results - driven sustainability agenda have earned us 9.7 points out of a possible 10 in the sustainability index created by the Lithuanian business daily Verslo Žinios and Swedbank.
ENCL.:
- Telia Lietuva, AB Interim Report for January-September of 2024.
- Presentation of Telia Lietuva, AB results for 9 months of 2024
Darius Džiaugys,
Head of Investor Relations,
tel. +370 5 236 7878,
e-mail: darius.dziaugys@telia.lt
