Teliasonera Says Will Cut 2,000 Jobs as Earnings Disappoint
Nordic telecom operator TeliaSonera intends to shed 2,000 jobs, it said on Wednesday while announcing a 1.2-percent fall in quarterly profit, which was below market expectations.
In the three months ending September 30, the group's net profit fell by 1.2 percent to 4.8 billion kronor ($727.66 million, 555.85 million euros).
That compared to a 4.86 billion consensus by analysts polled by Dow Jones Newswires, which would have represented a 1.6-percent rise.
TeliaSonera stood by its full-year outlook but said it planned to cut costs after its mobile operations experienced "weakness in service revenues in many of our markets."
The job cuts will be part of a two billion kronor restructuring program over the next two years.
"It will ... include personnel reductions and our initial estimate is that it will affect approximately 2,000 employees or 7 percent of the total workforce in the group," chief executive Lars Nyberg said.
Net sales fell 3.2 percent to 25.84 billion kronor, which was a bigger decline than the 2.1-percent drop expected by analysts.
Nyberg said TeliaSonera's costs were growing faster than its revenues and that the company had to "reverse this trend."
He said: "We have spent the last months analyzing our operation in depth."
He added that the group intended fundamentally to change its business by simplifying its way of working.
The company also said that although Europe and Asia continued to post double-digit growth for the sector, broadband services had seen a moderate decrease.
In midday trading, TeliaSonera shares were down by 1.5 percent on the Stockholm bourse, which was trading 0.2 percent lower.
Source: Agence France Presse
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