Telefonica, known best as being one of the world’s largest wireless service providers, has just published its quarterly results, and it’s their first net loss in nine years. From July to September, they lost 429 million Euros, versus making 5.1 billion Euros in the same timeframe last year. Operating income sat at at 348 million Euros, which is a steep 95.1% drop from 2010. Since the year started, Telefonica’s profits have dropped 69.1%. Despite the rough waters, Telefonica stuck with their 9-month guidance of 1.75 Euros per share in 2012. 6,500 staff in Spain are due to get canned over the next three years as a part of a restructuring initiative.
The scope of Telefonica’s operations is huge. They own O2, which is in the UK, Germany, and Czech Republic, have a 9.7% stake in China Unicom, and have a presence basically everywhere in South America. It’s too bad that they’re having a rough quarter, but if they fail to meet guidance next year, shareholder sentiment will only worsen.
You can dig deeper into Telefonica’s financials in this PDF. We’ll see how hard Telefonica’s stock gets hit in after-hours trading…
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