Germany: Telefónica / O2 makes a profit for the first time by selling antennas

Telefónica / O2 recorded a quarterly profit for the first time since 2016. The company announced on October 28, 2020 . The net result for the third quarter was 390 million euros, after a loss of 24 million euros in the same period last year. Sales rose slightly in the third quarter by 0.4 percent to 1.87 billion euros.

However, the profit is based on a one-off effect from the proceeds from the sale of the first tranche of rooftop locations to the infrastructure provider Telxius in the amount of 407 million euros. The infrastructure company Telxius is majority owned by the Spanish parent company Telefónica , which wants to reduce its debt burden. In February 2020, the Telefónica Group's debt was 37.74 billion euros.

But the network operator points to an improvement in the next year: "In the past, the negative net results were primarily based on depreciation on mobile radio frequencies acquired years ago and on scheduled depreciation from the merger with E-Plus. A significant part of these effects will expire at the end of 2020." , explained the Telefónica.

Telefónica: Good business with VDSL

VDSL connections in the Deutsche Telekom network met with interest. Their number rose by 33,500. A total of 2.25 million customers used fixed line offers from O2, which corresponds to an increase of 2.7 percent compared to the same quarter of the previous year.

Country Manager Markus Haas said: "We again developed robustly in the third quarter. Our core business is proving to be very resilient amid an overall economic recession." He is confident that he will achieve the goals set before the outbreak of the pandemic for the full year.

The Spanish parent company will present its quarterly results on October 29th.