By Marleen Kaesebier
(Reuters) -Telecoms group Swisscom reported slightly lower nine-month revenue on Thursday as higher sales at its Italian subsidiary Fastweb and its IT services business failed to offset a drop in its core Swiss activities.
Group revenue fell 0.4% to 8.17 billion Swiss francs ($9.44 billion) in the first nine months of the year, with sales at the core Swiss business down 1.7%. Third-quarter revenue was 2.72 billion francs, versus expectations for 2.76 billion francs.
Swisscom CEO Christoph Aeschlimann said ongoing price erosion in the telecom market had hit the company’s Swiss revenues.
The company added in a statement that the drop was partially offset by efficiency improvements, which Aeschlimann said included taking old products out of rotation, automating workflows and digitalising customer interaction like call centers with the use of AI.
“We expect about 50 million or north of 50 million savings this year based on all of these different projects,” he said. The group confirmed its 2024 full-year outlook.
Revenue rose 6.3% year-on-year to 2.03 billion euros at Fastweb and by 5% at Swisscom’s business IT services, with the company seeing ongoing growth in demand for cloud, security and SAP systems and business applications.
“Fastweb continues to enjoy revenue and operating income growth in Italy. The takeover of Vodafone Italia is on schedule,” Aeschlimann said in a company statement.
Swisscom said in March it would buy Vodafone Italia for 8 billion euros ($8.7 billion), intending to merge the business with Fastweb.
The acquisition is currently undergoing an in-depth review opened by the Italian antitrust authority last month, with its approval required to complete the deal.
“Our focus is really on closing the transaction so that we can actually get going, because right now… you can’t really run it because it’s not yours yet,” Aeschlimann said in a call with Reuters.
Swisscom said completion of the deal is still expected in the first quarter of 2025.
($1 = 0.8652 Swiss francs)
($1 = 0.9210 euros)
(Reporting by Marleen Kaesebier; Editing by Shri Navaratnam, Kirsten Donovan and Jan Harvey)
