Turkcell net profit falls mainly due to Belarus operations

Turkcell Iletisim Hizmetleri AS, Turkey's largest cell phone operator, late Wednesday posted a 9.9% fall in its fourth-quarter net profit, mainly due to one-off items stemming from its Belarusian operations.

Turkcell, which has 56% of the Turkish cell phone market, said its net profit in the fourth quarter was 331.7 million Turkish lira ($188.9 million). The profit is down from TRY368.1 million in the same period a year earlier, but above the forecast average in a Dow Jones Newswires survey of six analysts of a TRY296 million net profit.

Excluding one-off items mainly relating to Belarusian operations and currency devaluation in Belarus, net income would have been TRY437 million in the fourth quarter, the company said.

The company's revenue rose 12% to TRY2.44 billion in the fourth-quarter from the same period a year earlier, in line with average analysts' forecasts of TRY2.41 billion revenue.

Turkcell's 2011 full-year net profit fell 33% from the year earlier to TRY1.177 billion, mainly due to one-off items mostly stemming from Belarusian operations. Excluding one-off items and currency devaluation in Belarus, net income would have been TRY1.913 billion in 2011.

Commenting on the results, Dalibor Vavruska, an analyst with Citi said:"Somewhat disappointing profitability, in our view, came from competition, relative weakness of the domestic mobile business and not strong enough cost efficiency focus."

Turkcell has been the subject of a long running battle for control between Sweden's TeliaSonera A.B. and Russia's Altimo, a Moscow-based unit of Russia's Alfa Group, on one side and Turkey's Cukurova on the other.
 

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