Turkcell plans purchases as growth outpaces Vodafone
Posted by meb at February 12th, 2008
Turkcell Iletisim Hizmetleri AS, Turkey’s biggest mobile-phone company, plans to make international acquisitions this year after defending its home market against Vodafone Group Plc, Chief Executive Officer Sureyya Ciliv said in an interview with Bloomberg.
“I’ll be surprised if we don’t make some acquisitions in 2008,” Ciliv, 49, said in an interview at Turkcell’s headquarters, Bloomberg reported. “Maybe we’re getting lucky: credit markets are tightening up and Turkcell is sitting on a lot of cash.”
Turkcell has climbed 54 percent in trading since Ciliv took over as CEO in January 2007, more than triple the gain on Turkey’s benchmark index. Turkcell had a record $401.2 million profit in the third quarter and added 3.5 million customers in the year through September. The growth outpaces that of London- based Vodafone, which spent $4.55 billion on Turkey’s second- biggest mobile-phone company in 2006, according to Bloomberg.
Turkcell said in December that it’s bidding for a majority stake in Syrian cellular provider Syriatel Mobile Telecom. Turkcell sees “a lot of potential for growth” in Syria, where only about 25 percent of the population uses mobile phones, and is talking to potential partners there, Ciliv told Bloomberg.
The company is also considering investments in other countries, Ciliv said, without naming them. In the past three years, Turkcell lost auctions for cellular units in Saudi Arabia, Greece and Kuwait, and its bid to start a network in was blocked by the Islamic republic’s government.
Turkcell and TeliaSonera AB have a joint venture in Azerbaijan, and agreed to spend $180 million to buy the shares in that unit that they don’t already own from the Azeri government, Dunya newspaper reported today. Turkcell may face a new regulation this year that will require phone companies to let customers keep their numbers when they switch operators, or so-called number portability.
source: Hürriyet
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