Profits decline at Irish subsidiary of telecoms giant Verizon

The Irish arm of telecoms group Verizon reported a sharp decline in profits last year as revenues fell 10 per cent.

Verizon Ireland Limited, whose parent recently announced plans to cut 2,100 employees globally after acquiring Yahoo's core internet assets for $4.5 billion (€3.84 billion), reported pretax profits of €2.4 billion for the year ending December 2016, as against €4.3 million a year earlier.

The drop in profits came as turnover fell to €35.9 million from €38.5 million.

A breakdown of turnover shows it recorded €20 million in private IP and ethernet-related revenues. In addition, it achieved €9.7 million from voice and data services, and a further €4.9 million from core voice and data networking services.

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Verizon is one of the largest communication technology firms in the world with revenues of $126 billion in 2016. It employs 163,400 people worldwide and is ranked in 14th place on the Fortune 500 list.

The group said recently it was to merge Yahoo and AOL, which it acquired for $4.4 billion in June 2015, into a new digital media company called Oath.

Operating profit at the Irish unit rose to €2.7 million from €2.3 million last year as operating costs fell to €21.8 million from €26.1 million.

Headcount fell to 55 from 62 people with employee costs unchanged at €5.2 million.