Final 1998 annual results

FINAL 1998 ANNUAL RESULTS Market Overview The Swedish mobile telecommunications market experienced another, successive year of strong growth in 1998. While full year figures for the market are not yet available, the penetration (number of mobile customers compared with the total population) as of the end of September was approximately 43%. This was an increase of over 7 percentage points from the 36% level at the end of 1997 and compares with a total increase of just under 8 percentage points for the full year in 1997. At the end of September there were over 3.8 million mobile telephone customers in Sweden, up 651,000 since the end of 1997. Nearly 75% of these net customer additions were prepaid users, up from 35% for all of 1997, reflecting the strong growth trend in this segment. In 1998 Europolitan had its best year ever in customer growth, with a total of 200,000 net customer additions, including 88,000 activated Europolitan EASY prepaid cards, raising the year-end customer base to 624,000. This compares with 143,000 net new customers during the previous year, including 7,000 activated prepaid cards. Europolitan significantly expanded distribution of prepaid cards during 1998, but the company's main focus continued to be on acquiring traditional subscription customers who on average produce higher revenue. Growth in the business segments continued to be favorable. Partly as a result of Europolitan's customer loyalty and retention programs, the churn rate for the year improved somewhat compared with 1997. Although Europolitan's share of the total number of mobile customers increased from 13% to 15% during the first nine months of 1998, its share of net subscription additions (excluding prepaid) was nearly 50%. This was also reflected in an even higher proportionate market share of revenue. During the year Europolitan launched a number of new products and services across various segments of the market: - Mobile Text Telephone service for the hearing impaired - LAN Direkt for mobile corporate users - Personal Answering Service for small and medium size businesses. - ------------------------------------------------------------ Please visit http://www.bit.se for further information The following files are available for download: http://www.bit.se/bitonline/1999/01/28/19990128BIT00220/bit0001.doc Entire annual results http://www.bit.se/bitonline/1999/01/28/19990128BIT00220/bit0002.pdf Entire annual results