RIYADH, 23 April 2004 — Saudi Telecom (STC), the largest listed company in the Kingdom, said yesterday that net profits rose by 11 percent in the first quarter of 2004 to SR2.5 billion ($667 million).
The figure compares with SR2.26 billion ($602 million) in the same period last year, said Chairman Khaled Al-Melhem, quoted by the official SPA news agency. Operating revenues in the first quarter rose by nine percent to SR7.3 billion ($1.95 billion), he said.
Saudi Telecom, which was partly privatized in 2002, posted a 140 percent jump in profits to $2.26 billion last year. The company will continue to have a monopoly over land lines and Internet services in the Gulf state until 2008, but a second mobile phone operator is due to be licensed later this year after the mobile sector was opened to competition.
Eleven consortia, including telecom giants such as Vodafone of Britain and Deutsche Telekom of Germany, are in the race to enter the lucrative Saudi market where the number of mobile users now is estimated at 7.5 million with a growth rate of about 30 percent.
Melhem said Saudi Telecom had “successfully” introduced an additional zero in mobile numbers, which now begin with 050 instead of 05, a move intended to increase capacity tenfold from the current 10 million available numbers.
