Telecom carrier America Movil today said its Capex (capital expenditures) during Q1 2014 reached 19.1 billion pesos.
First quarter revenues rose 1.3 percent to 195.4 billion pesos.
The Mexico City-based company said its net income decreased 48 percent to 13.9 billion pesos in the quarter. The decline came in part because the company recorded a 17.4 billion-peso foreign-exchange gain in the first quarter of 2013, compared with only 91 million pesos in the same period this year.
Its total subscriber base rose 4.5 percent to 342.9 million. This figure comprises 272.2 million wireless subscribers, 31.4 million landlines, 19.6 million broadband accesses and 19.7 million PayTV units.
Billionaire Carlos Slim-promoted America Movil said its wireless subscriber base rose 3.5 percent year-on-year with net additions that came in at 2.3 million for the quarter, including 1.4 million users from the acquisition of Page Plus and net disconnections of 585 thousand subscribers.
America Movil had 70.7 million fixed RGUs at the end of March, 8.2 percent more than a year before.
The Latin American mobile-phone company added 2.3 million wireless users, after disconnecting 980,000 prepaid clients who weren’t using their phones enough.
Bloomberg reported that America Movil is facing a sluggish economy in Mexico, along with government oversight thanks to a law enacted last year to boost competition. That’s putting more pressure on divisions in countries such as Brazil and Colombia to shore up growth.
America Movil said its profit margin expanded 1.5 percentage points to 26.1 percent in Brazil, its second-biggest market. Satellite and cable subscriptions, up 16 percent from a year earlier, led growth for the region. The unit’s mobile service revenue climbed 3.8 percent.
Latin America’s largest economy is playing a more prominent role in America Movil’s results. At the end of the quarter, Brazil accounted for 25 percent of all of America Movil’s mobile-phone customers, compared with Mexico’s 27 percent.
In Mexico, regulators have cut fees and forced the company to share the network infrastructure that has given it a competitive advantage for more than two decades. The profit margin slid 1.4 percentage points to 44.4 percent.
Mobile service revenue in Mexico expanded 4.1 percent.
After a failed takeover of Dutch phone operator Royal KPN last year, the company entered an agreement last week to share control of Telekom Austria with the European nation’s government, triggering a bid of $1.96 billion to buy out minority shareholders.
The company added 1.2 million subscriptions for landline services including phone, Internet and television.
