Pro jedince, kteri utrpeli vzdelani a umi si precist clanek poradne ;)
By Andrea Dudikova and Marek Miler
March 14 (Bloomberg) -- Cesky Telecom AS, the biggest Czech
phone company, will hold off on setting a long-term dividend
policy until it can stop fixed-line revenue from falling, Chief
Executive Officer Jaime Smith said in an interview.
``We do not plan to propose a new policy this year and the
main reason for that is that we don't see that the business is
stable enough for us to set it,'' Smith said in an interview in
Prague yesterday. ``We are in the middle of transformation.''
Telefonica SA, Spain's largest phone company, bought a
controlling stake in Cesky Telecom last year. Cesky Telecom's new
management group, which was installed by Madrid-based Telefonica
eight months ago, is trying to sell more data and Internet
services to make up for falling revenue from regular calls.
Telefonica is merging Cesky Telecom with the mobile-phone
unit Eurotel to be able to offer combined fixed-line and mobile
services. The integration is expected to boost revenue and reduce
costs in areas such as network maintenance, accounting and
information technology systems, Smith said. The new company will
be called Telefonica O2 Czech Republic AS.
Cesky Telecom's revenue from fixed-line services, which
accounts for a half of the company's consolidated revenue, fell
4.5 percent last year to 32.3 billion koruna ($1.34 billion),
according to the restated data released on Feb. 24. The number of
fixed lines fell 7 percent to 3.1 million during the year.
The management's ability to stem the drop in revenue from
fixed-line services will determine its future dividend payments,
employment policy, investments and size of debt, Smith said.
``2006 will be a key year,'' he said. ``If everything goes as
planned this year, we can get a positive growth for 2007.''
Growth Areas
Revenue from Cesky Telecom's high-speed Internet services
jumped 85 percent to 1.8 billion koruna last year. Eurotel's
revenue from Internet and data services doubled last year to 1.4
billion koruna and income from services such as text and picture
messages increased 4.1 percent to 4.1 billion koruna.
On Feb. 23, the company proposed a dividend of 45 koruna a
share, which still requires approval at the annual shareholders'
meeting scheduled for April. The previous management's dividend
policy was linked to net income according to Czech accounting
standards, under which the company no longer reports.
Analysts including Milan Vanicek at Atlantik Financial
Markets AS say the merger of the fixed and mobile units will allow
the combined company to tap Eurotel earnings to pay dividends.
Smith said the retained cash from Eurotel's previous earnings
will total 17.3 billion koruna, after a planned dividend payment
of 14.5 billion koruna this year.
Job Cuts
The Cesky Telecom-Eurotel integration will also result in a
reduction of the combined workforce of 10,000 employees. The
reduction at the fixed-line business will be lower than last
year's 14 percent cut, Smith said.
The need for further job cuts will depend ``on the degree of
success that we obtain on the revenue side,'' Smith said. ``If we
are not successful in doing this, probably the need for reducing
headcount will be larger.''
The company also won't boost investment until the management
has more information about how its fixed-line strategy is working,
Smith said.
Capital expenditure totaling between 10 percent and 12
percent of sales ``makes sense in the long term,'' he said.
