The company reported a second-quarter profit of 673 million Qatar riyals ($184.8 million), compared with 571 million riyals a year ago, it said in a statement on Sunday. Two analysts polled by Reuters forecast second-quarter net profit of 673.3 million riyals and 773.4 million riyals respectively."(We saw) impressive performance from the Wataniya Group portfolio with Kuwait and Algeria delivering particularly strong growth, while Tunisia demonstrated robust performance in the mobile segment despite a challenging environment," Qtel said in a statement. Wataniya's consolidated customer base increased 6.8 percent in the first half of the year, while Indonesian affiliate Indosat's subscriber base increased 23.7 percent during the period, Qtel said. Consolidated revenue for the quarter also rose 18 percent to 7.99 billion riyals compared with 6.77 billion riyals for the year-ago period. Qtel, which operates in 17 countries, has expanded rapidly abroad to mitigate the loss of its monopoly after Vodafone Qatar, a unit of Britain's Vodafone entered the Gulf Arab state's market. In 2008, it bought a 40.8 percent stake in Indosat, Indonesia's second-biggest mobile telephone company, later raising its holding to 65 percent in a bid to tap growth potential in the world's most populous Muslim country. Qtel shares closed 0.7 percent lower on the Qatar bourse Sunday prior to the results.
