MADRID: Spanish telecoms group Telefonica expects to increase revenue by more than 4 percent in 2016, stabilise its profit margin and pay its dividend fully in cash after completion of the sale of its British unit O2, the company said on Friday.
Revenue rose 8.7 percent last year to 47.2 billion euros ($52.2 billion), helped by German and Latin American operations and improvement in its domestic market, though core profit fell by a bigger than expected 17.2 percent to 11.41 billion euros, hit by one-off charges.
Excluding 3.5 billion euros of restructuring charges, core profit would have increased by 3.6 percent, Telefonica said.
Having spent the past four years reorganising around fewer but stronger businesses and cutting its debt, Telefonica is still facing the legacy of a deep economic crisis in Spain.
The company booked a 2.9 billion euro charge in the final quarter of 2015 to fund its staff-cutting plan. It also had 256 million euros in charges related to the restructuring of operations in Latin America, Germany, Spain and others, made other accounting adjustments worth 23 million euros and set aside 325 million euros to finance its foundation.
Debt remains a concern but was stable at 49.9 billion euros at Dec. 31, compared with 49.7 billion euros at the end of December.
