The Australian owners of Eircom have cut the value of their investment in the telecoms company by more than €700 million, acknowledging that they overpaid for the business when they bought it for €2.36 billion less than three years ago.
Babcock Brown Capital (BCM) has written off €720 million of the value of their investment in Eircom due to a deterioration in the outlook and the telecoms firm’s increasing pension deficit. Eircom has a deficit of €433 million in its pension scheme.
BCM purchased Eircom for €2.36 billion less than three years ago. Eircom today reported a 3 per cent fall in group revenue to €517 million for the three-month period to the end of December.
Fixed-line revenues were down 3 per cent to €404 million due to falling prices while ebtia from this arm of the business was down 7 per cent at €136 million.
Revenues at Eircom’s mobile phone unit Meteor rose to €129 million, up 6 per cent on the comparable quarter from the pervious year. Ebtia for Meteor for the period was €28 million, 8 per cent higher than the corresponding period.
At the end of December Meteor had 1.02 million customers, up 49,000 over the first six months of the year. Average monthly revenue per user (APRU) was €38.54, down 5 per cent for the second half of the year compared with the same period in 2007.
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