Telefonica Brasil 4Q Net Profit Down 1.34% At BRL1.46 Billion

Telefonica Brasil SA.(VIVT3.BR, VIV) Thursday reported its fourth-quarter net profit fell 1.34% to 1.46 billion Brazilian reais ($848 million) from a year earlier due to higher operating costs.

The results included that of fixed telephone company and mobile phone operator Vivo SA. In mid 2011, Spain's Telefonica SA (TEF), which controls the companies, merged its fixed-line and mobile operations by integrating them into a single company.

Telefonica Brasil's operating costs totaled BRL5.3 billion in the period, up from BRL5.12 billion previously.

Revenue rose to BRL8.6 billion during the quarter from BRL8.23 billion.

Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, or Ebitda, were up to BRL3.3 billion from BRL3.1 billion. The company's Ebitda margin increased to 38.5% from 37.7%.

For the whole of 2011, Telefonica Brasil's profit rose to BRL5.07 billion from BRL4.3 billion in 2010.

The company ended the year with a total of 86.86 million customers, compared with 75.39 million clients in 2010. Of the total clients, the mobile segment saw an 18.7% increase to 71.6 million in the mobile segment while the fixed line segment gained just 1.4% to 15.3 million clients.

Telefonica Brasil is the local largest mobile phone company in terms of market share at 29.5% as of end-2011.

-By Rogerio Jelmayer, Dow Jones Newswires; 55-11-3544-7071; [e-mail]