Eircell recorded pre-tax profits of £6 million and signed up 126,000 extra customers in the year to the start of April, the company said yesterday. A wholly-owned subsidiary of Telecom Eireann, Eircell also said it had spent £18.3 million on sales and marketing for the period.

The company said its turnover for the period was £209.3 million, a rise of 30 per cent on the £160.5 million it recorded for the 12 months to the start of April 1997. Profit before tax was £6 million, up 278 per cent from £1.6 million, and after-tax profit was £3.3 million, up from £1 million, Eircell said.

The company said its customer base had grown by 44 per cent to 415,000, "achieved despite the competitive pressures from the second mobile phone operator".

Eircell said it currently held a 77 per cent share of the Republic's mobile phone market, with its growth driven partially by the sale of 100,000 pre-paid, Ready-to-Go phones.

Current mobile phone penetration in the Republic was at around 16 per cent, the company said, a level slightly ahead of Britain's and close to the European average.

"Given the much higher rates of penetration in certain European countries, this growth is anticipated to continue for the foreseeable future. It is forecast that there will be in excess of one million mobile phone users in Ireland by the year 2000," Eircell said.

The company said operating costs increased by 19 per cent to £159.5 million. Within this budget, it added, the cost of its sales and marketing drive had risen some 50 per cent, to £18.3 million.

The company's financial controller, Mr Dermot Griffin, said that Eircell's debt to its parent company, Telecom Eireann, had risen over the course of the year by around £35 million to £76 million. He said the extra loans formed part of Eircell's £66 million investment expenditure throughout the year on its network.

The chief executive of Esat Digifone, Mr Barry Maloney, said that despite the publication of separate accounts, Eircell could still be regarded as "little more than the marketing arm of Telecom Eireann's mobile phone service", and said that figures hid a host of intricate financial transactions between the two companies.