By Margit Feher
BUDAPEST--This year's revenue increase at Magyar Telekom Nyrt.
(MTELEKOM.BU), Hungary's largest telecommunications company by
market share, hinges on the firm's Macedonian telecom and Hungarian
energy retail business, a company executive said Thursday after the
firm revised its 2013 revenue forecast higher.
The company doesn't plan to exit the energy retail market even
after being hit by the Hungarian government's various
sector-specific taxes and a 10% government-mandated cut for
households in January.
"We don't want to exit the energy market by any means," Janos
Szabo, deputy chief executive, said at a press conference.
The company has been concentrating on selling power to
businesses, versus residential consumers, which the government
price cut didn't apply to businesses, he added. It is also in the
process of negotiating a deal with the government under which the
firm would have access to the wholesale supply of energy under the
same conditions as other firms, he said. The talks are expected to
yield a result in September or October, Mr. Szabo said.
Even though the company has raised its guidance to an
unspecified rise in 2013 revenue from its earlier view for a flat
revenue, the management left its earnings before interest, taxes,
depreciation and amortization, or Ebitda, forecast unchanged at an
annual drop of between 9%-12%.
"We will continue to focus on the Ebitda so that it would be as
favorable as possible," Mr. Szabo said.
The company expects the Hungarian government to call a new
tender for free telecom frequencies this year, Mr. Szabo said.
He also denied market rumors that the company would delist from
the Budapest Stock Exchange due to its sharply lower share price
compared with a year earlier.
Magyar Telekom's net profit was 12.21 billion forints ($54.2
million) in the second quarter of 2013, up 14% from HUF10.68
billion a year earlier, the company said earlier in the day. That
exceeded the median expectation of analysts for HUF11.53 billion in
a poll by Portfolio.hu.
Deutsche Telekom AG (DTE.XE) holds a majority stake in Magyar
Telekom.
Write to Margit Feher at margit.feher@wsj.com
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