Anacom profits fall 13% to €34.5 million

 In News, Regulators and Supervisors, Telecoms

The revenues of Portuguese telecommunications regulator Anacom increased 2% to €97.3 million but expenses rose 13% to €62.8 million.

Profits therefore fell 13% last year to €34.5 million. The regulator, which has spent the past year bickering with Portugal’s main telecoms providers over the rules governing the current 5G auction, has blamed the fall in its net results on “a number of marked developments seen in the parameters that comprise revenue and expenditure.”
Last year, Anacom’s revenues increased 2% to €97.3 million and expenditure rose 13% to €62.8 million.
Regarding income, the regulator states that the variation is explained by the increases in the “turnover amount of electronic communications activity and consequent charges (+2% to €94.2 million) and in the “value of other service provision” and on “diverse variations”.
The annual rates for electronic communications activity, which include the turnover of charges on communications operators totalled €34.3 million, an increase of 5%, whose increase is “results essentially from the increase seen in the average of supported costs from provisions over the past five years.”
“The average increase in provisions in 2020 is wholly down to legal cases brought by service suppliers regarding the regulation charges paid by Anacom under the terms of legislation in force,” states the regulator.
Incomes from band use charges rose 1% to €58.2 million last year and annual postal service activity charges grew 16% to €2.5 million.
“Paid fines fell 7% to €353,000 (a fall of €27,000), which resulted from market inspection activities and applied fines under the law depending on the number of infractions and their gravity and which determine increases or decreases,” adds the regulator.
On the expenditure side, Anacom states that the variation is down to an increase in expenditure on external services supply (+17% to €9.8 million), staff expenditure (+5% to €24.3 million), an increase in the depreciations and amortisations of provisions (+37% to 32.9 million) and impairments and a reduction in other costs (-2% to €7.5 million).
In the period under analysis, provisions rose 31% to €181.1 million while it recommends that the amount of €32.7 million it will deliver to the State should “preferably used in the development of communications in Portugal that will benefit end users.”