Wednesday, March 02, 2005

Q4 datapoints - Netherlands

I was actually at home in bed with stomach flu yesterday when KPN reported Q4 results, the first time I have ever missed a set of numbers because of illness. I probably wasn't the only one feeling queasy. Outgoing voice minutes per line were 8% lower year-on-year in Q4, and 23% lower than Q4 2002, and line loss ran at over 3% annualized. The company is planning to lay off up to 8,000 over the next five years, that's 28% of the total workforce (this reminds me of one of my elder daughter's favorite stories, Matilda, in which the evil headmistress says that her idea of the perfect school is one with no children) - and what's really worrying is that KPN was already among the most productive telcos in Europe. IPTV, DVB-T, VoIP, all catchwords used thousands of times in yesterday's analyst presentation, and undoubtedly the right thing to be talking about at this point. Yet the share price is down over 1% today in a flattish market...

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