Telefonica Brasil SA. Thursday reported its first-quarter net profit fell 15.2% to 956.5 million Brazilian reais ($488 million) from a year earlier due to higher costs generated by depreciation and amortizations.
The results included that of fixed telephone company and mobile phone operator Vivo SA. In mid-2011, Spain’s Telefonica SA, which controls the companies, merged its fixed-line and mobile operations by integrating them into a single company.
Telefonica Brasil’s costs generated by depreciation and amortizations totaled BRL1.3 billion in the first-quarter, up from BRL1.08 billion in the year-ago period. Revenue rose to BRL8.3 billion during the quarter from BRL8 billion.
Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, or Ebitda, increased slightly to BRL2.85 billion from BRL2.84 billion. The company’s Ebitda margin decreased to 34.2% from 35.4%.
The company ended the year with a total of 90 million customers, compared with 77 million clients in the first-quarter of 2011. Of the total clients, the mobile segment saw a 20.5% increase to 74.8 million in the mobile segment, while the fixed-line segment gained just 1.3% to 15.25 million clients.
Telefonica Brasil is the local largest mobile phone company in terms of market share at 29.8% in the first-quarter.