Carphone Warehouse calls in solid results
Mobile market conditions continue to favour the Carphone Warehouse model.
Total connections grew by 15.1% to 1.78m year-on-year in the 13 weeks to 1 October 2005. Subscription connections grew by 20.6% to 0.83m, driven by the strong handset pipeline and high levels of activity across all channels.
Pre-pay connections were up 13.1% to 0.81m. End demand in this segment was good, but the rate of growth slowed from the first quarter because of the very strong performance this time last year. SIM-free sales were down 2.0% to 0.14m.
Traffic over the Opal network grew 40.4% to 3.1 billion minutes in the quarter.Excluding TalkTalk traffic, minutes grew 26.3% to 1.7 billion.
TalkTalk UK added a further 69,000 customers during the quarter as the company continued to refine it’s channel strategy.
Charles Dunstone, Chief Executive Officer, said “We have enjoyed another excellent quarter of growth. Mobile market conditions continue to favour the Carphone Warehouse model, and our on-going efforts to differentiate our offer are being rewarded. Our customer bases all made good progress, underpinning the quality of our earnings. Overall, performance in the first half has been ahead of our expectations and we expect interim headline pre-tax profits to be up 35% year-on-year.’
