Mobinil, the leading mobile services provider in Egypt, has posted a decline of 18 per cent in its net profit of EGP737 million ($129.2 million) for the first half of the year compared to EGP902 million during the same period last year.

On a quarterly basis, net profit for the second quarter of the year declined 29 per cent to EGP381m compared to EGP536m recorded in the second quarter of 2009.

Mobinil, which leads the Egyptian market in terms of subscriber base, added 26,000 new subscriptions in the quarter, making a total of 26.148 million closing subscribers at the end of June.

Its main rival, Vodafone Egypt, added 1.2 million subscribers to reach a subscriber base of 25.79 million.

According to Reuters, analysts had on average forecast Mobinil's subscriber numbers to be at 26.9 million at the end of June.

The reported net revenues for the first half of the year reached EGP5,076 million, a fall of 2.7 per cent on the same period last year. Revenues during the second quarter of the year reached EGP2,530 million, reflecting a 7 per cent decline over the reported revenues for the second quarter of 2009.

Mobinil’s result for the first half of the year was below consensus estimates, and the management expects the current adverse conditions to remain for the foreseeable future, a statement said.

According to management, Mobinil faced a major intensification of the regulatory and competitive pressures in the first half of the year, which played a dominant role in affecting the company’s growth.

CEO Hassan Kabbani said that Mobinil was limited to relying almost entirely on recycling of old numbers in order to provide its services to the market.

“We still expect those adverse conditions to continue in the foreseeable future, and as we have the largest base, we will be the most impacted,” said Kabbani.

“We will continue our efforts to solve the issue with the regulator who is limiting the availability of dials thus affecting the healthy competition.”

“In the second half we will work intensely to increase our share of net adds and maintain our market share leadership. We will also continue our focus on cost efficiency, which has yielded an improvement in our EBITDA margin over last quarter,” he concluded. – TradeArabia News Service