America Movil's pay TV additions drive up wireline-revenue generating units to 71.8M

América Móvil's second-quarter 2014 wireline segment revenues saw the benefit of increases in both pay TV and broadband access subscriber increases.

As of the end of June, América Móvil's fixed revenue generating units (RGUs) reached 71.8 million, up 1.2 million in the quarter. The service provider said that half of the RGUs were pay TV units--its fastest growing division--while 364,000 were broadband access subscribers.

Meanwhile, in its international markets, it added 309,000 traditional landline subscribers.

On a regional basis, Brazil continues to be the dominant region, rising 12.2 percent to 34.5 million fixed units at the end of June. Brazil makes up 48 percent of its wireline RGUs, with pay TV and broadband accesses rising 14 percent, and fixed-voice accesses growing 8.2 percent. One of the unique elements of the Brazil market is that 68.1 percent of the new customers are taking triple-play bundles.

Over in Mexico, wireline RGUs represented 31 percent of its total RGUs. The service provider said that in Mexico it "continued to lose voice lines, but managed to increase our broadband base by 3.7% year-on-year."

From an overall financial perspective, the service provider's second-quarter 2014 revenues rose 4 percent year-over-year to $16 billion, while service revenues excluding currency effects increased 5.8 percent. Growth was driven by pay TV and mobile data, while both fixed and mobile voice revenues were lower, hurt by the effects of regulatory issues.  

Meanwhile, EBITDA rose 2.4 percent to $5.15 billion and increased 4.7 percent at constant exchange rates. However, operating profit fell 3.3 percent to 3 billion due to higher depreciation and amortization of investments. Likewise, net profit was up 32.7 percent from a year ago to $1.5 billion thanks to a reduction in financing costs. 

For more:
- see the earnings release (.pdf)

Special report: Wireline telecom earnings in the second quarter of 2014

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