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TeliaSonera cuts jobs despite profits boost

Nordic telecoms giant TeliaSonera announced layoffs within its fixed broadband operations, despite posting a 13 percent rise in net profits for 2010.

Published: 3 February 2011 08:20 CET
Updated: 3 February 2011 11:43 CET
TeliaSonera cuts jobs despite profits boost

TeliaSonera, born out of the 2002 merger between Swedish Telia and Finnish

Sonera, posted a net profit last year of 21.26 billion kronor ($3.31 billion), up from 18.85 billion in 2009, despite a two-percent drop in sales to 106.58 billion kronor.

The dwindling sales were especially due to the increasingly strong krona, and the company said that without the negative exchange rate impact, its sales were up 3.5 percent in 2010.

TeliaSonera also saw its subscription numbers swell by seven percent last year to 156.5 million, 55.3 million of them in the consolidates operations and 101.2 million in associated companies.

In the fourth quarter, TeliaSonera posted an eight-percent-hike in net profits to 5.31 billion kronor on sales down three percent at 26.77 billion.

Disregarding the negative impact of the exchange rate however, the company’s

fourth quarter sales were up 4.2 percent in the quarter.

The results slightly missed the expectations of analysts polled by Dow Jones Newswires, who had predicted a quarterly net profit of 5.33 billion kronor and a two-percent drop in sales.

Nonetheless, the figures allowed the company to raise its annual dividend to 2.75 kronor per share from 2.25 kronor in 2009.

Following Thursday’s earnings, TeliaSonera saw its stock price jump 2.82 percent to 54.60 kronor a share in mid-morning trading on a Stockholm stock exchange down 0.09 percent.

For 2011, the Swedish-Finnish company forecast “somewhat” higher sales, boosted by strong growth in Spain, Eastern Europe and central Asia, while mobile Internet traffic volumes are expected to grow eight fold over three years as the use of smartphones and tablet devices continues to balloon.

“The demand for smart phones is growing at an exceptional rate. In 2010, seven out of 10 new mobile phones sold in our Swedish stores were smart phones,” TeliaSonera chief executive Lars Nyberg said in the earnings statement.

The hike in mobile data services has however had an impact on TeliaSonera’s traditional broadband offerings, and the company said it planned to cut 800 of

5,000 jobs in that division due to “synergies.”

The 800 job cuts — 640 in Sweden and 160 in Finland — will meanwhile be balanced out by an expected 200 new jobs created elsewhere, the company said.

Like its largest Nordic competitors, Norwegian Telenor and Swedish Tele2, TeliaSonera has in recent years set its sights on expanding towards the East,

increasing its presence in the Baltic countries, Turkey, Russia and other former Soviet states.

TeliaSonera, which shares the rank as leading Nordic operator with Telenor, reported that its Spanish mobile operator Yoigo met its goals and reported positive results in the fourth quarter.

“Yoigo is well positioned to compete in Spain and has achieved a market share of four percent. In order to maximize shareholder value, we will now continue to develop the business and the next milestone is to record positive cash flow at the end of 2011,” Nyberg said.

TeliaSonera, holds 44 percent of Russia’s second largest operator Megafon and 38 percent of Turkish leader Turkcell, which it aims to merge with Russian group Alfa’s holdings in the two companies. The deal has however been blocked for the time being by a Russian court.

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GOVERNMENT

Was Norway ill prepared for the Covid-19 pandemic?

A report from a Norwegian commission appointed to assess the country’s management of the Covid-19 pandemic has concluded that while the government handled the situation well, it was poorly prepared for the crisis.

Published: 14 April 2021 17:11 CEST
Was Norway ill prepared for the Covid-19 pandemic?
Photo by Eirik Skarstein on Unsplash

The 450-page report was submitted to Prime Minister Erna Solberg by medical professor Stener Kvinnsland, who led the review.

The commission found that, generally, Norway had handled the pandemic well compared to the rest of Europe. That was in part due to citizens taking infection control measures on board.

“After a year of pandemic, Norway is among the countries in Europe with the lowest mortality and lowest economic impact. The authorities could not have succeeded if the population had not supported the infection control measures;” the report states.

However, the commission’s report also outlined that Norway did not properly prepare itself for the pandemic.

“The authorities knew that a pandemic was the most likely national crisis to have the most negative consequences. Nevertheless, they were not prepared when the extensive and serious Covid-19 pandemic came,” it said.

Prime Minister Erna Solberg said during an interview with the commission, conducted as part of its work, that the government did not have an infection control strategy of its own.

“We had a ‘we have to deal with a difficult situation’ strategy. We had to do everything we could to gain control and get the infection down. It was really only at the end of March (2020) that we found the more long-term strategy,” she told the commission.

Low stocks of personal protective equipment were another source of criticism in the report.

“The government knew that it would in all probability be difficult to obtain infection control equipment in the event of a pandemic. Nevertheless, the warehouses were almost empty,” Kvinnsland said at a press conference.

Norwegian health authorities were praised for the swiftness with which they implemented infection control measures. But the commission said that the decision should have been formally made by the government, rather than the Norwegian Directorate of Health.

READ MORE: Norway saw fewer hospital patients in 2020 despite pandemic 

The implementation of restrictions in March 2020 was critiqued for failing to ensure that “infection control measures were in line with the constitution and human rights.”

One-fifth of municipalities in Norway lacked a functioning plan in the event of a pandemic according to the report, and the government did not provide enough support to municipalities.

“We believe that government paid too little attention to the municipalities. The municipalities were given much larger tasks than they could have prepared for,” Kvinnsland said.

The report was also critical of Norway’s lack of a plan for dealing with imported infections in autumn 2020.

“The government lacked a plan to deal with imported infections when there was a new wave of infections in Europe in the autumn of 2020,” the report found.

“When the government eased infection control measures towards the summer of 2020, they made many assessments individually. The government did not consider the sum of the reliefs and it had no plan to deal with increasing cross-border infection,” it added.

The report also concluded that Norway allowed itself to be too easily lobbied by business when deciding to ease border restrictions last summer.

The division of roles in handling aspects of the pandemic was scrutinised in the report. Here, the division of responsibilities between the Ministry of Health and Care Services, The Norwegian Directorate of Health and the Norwegian Institute of Public Health were unclear.

The prime minister has asked the commission to continue its work.

“We are not done with the pandemic yet. Therefore, it is natural that the commission submits a final report. There will also be topics where the learning points can only be drawn later,” Solberg said.  

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