German fibre build and a customer boom at T-Mobile US drove the results, the company said, saying it was its “most successful year ever”.
“This is a historic day for Deutsche Telekom,” said CEO Tim Höttges (pictured). “We have confirmed our position as the clear number one in our industry in Europe with these record results.”
Today’s 2019 results mean Deutsche Telekom is almost twice as big as its French rival, Orange, which last week recorded revenue of €42.2 billion and profit of €3.2 billion.
Cash capital expenditure was €13.1 billion through 2019, driven by accelerated 5G build-out by T-Mobile US, in which Deutsche Telekom owns a controlling stake.
Deutsche Telekom said it expects “another increase in revenue” in 2020, with adjusted EBITDA targeted at €25.5 billion euros, of which around €13.9 billion euros will come from outside of the US – meaning T-Mobile US will make €11.6 billion. Earlier this month T-Mobile US won approval for its planned merger with Sprint, the fourth largest mobile operator in the US. The merger is expected to be completed on 1 April.
In Germany, the company says 28 million households and business locations are able to use super vectoring with bandwidths of at least 250Mbps. In addition, there were 14.4 million fibre at the end of 2019, 2.2 million more than a year earlier.
T-Mobile US ended the year with 86 million customers, 6.4 million more than a year earlier, making 2019 the sixth year in succession with more than five million customer additions. The company put on more than a million net additions to branded postpaid phone customers in the fourth quarter.
T-Systems, which has faced a challenging few years, “ended the year with a strong trend in order entry”, said the company. “The order volume was up 8.2% in 2019 at €7.3 billion. But revenue declined slightly by 1.9% in the full year to €6.8 billion. Growth of 17.4% “was primarily attributable to the ongoing transformation of the company”, said Deutsche Telekom.
