Etisalat Q3 profit rises on UAE mobile expansion

ABU DHABI, Oct 15 (Reuters) - Emirates Telecommunications Corp (ETEL.AD) (Etisalat), the third largest Arab telecom firm by market value, reported a 14 percent rise in third-quarter profit on Monday as it continued to add mobile customers in the United Arab Emirates.

Etisalat, which has operations extending from Pakistan to Nigeria, made 1.8 billion dirhams ($490.2 million) in the three months to Sept. 30, Reuters calculated from nine-month data the company released.

Analysts' forecasts in a Reuters survey last month ranged from 1.95 billion dirhams to 1.96 billion dirhams.

The company did not give quarterly data, saying only that net income in the nine months to Sept. 30 rose to 5.53 billion dirhams from 4.39 billion dirhams in the same period last year.

On Sept. 30 Etisalat had 6.2 million mobile phone customers in the UAE compared with 5.99 million at the end of the second quarter. The increase of about 210,000 users was the same as in the three months to June 30, the first full quarter of domestic competition.

Etisalat lost its domestic mobile phone monopoly to du DU.DU this year.

Etisalat's domestic market is the main driver of growth and mobile phone users in the country of about 4 million people account for more than 60 percent of revenue.

Revenue in the nine-month period grew 30 percent to 15.38 billion dirhams, Etislat said in the statement.

Capital expenditure was 2.28 billion, it said, without giving a comparative figure.

((Reporting by Gulf newsroom, editing by Greg Mahlich; tel +971 4 391 8301; dubai.newsroom@reuters.com))

($1=3.672 UAE dirhams) Keywords: ETISALAT EARNINGS/

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