Virgin Mobile rings up its maiden profit

Virgin Mobile announced yesterday it had signed up more than a third of a million new customers in the fourth quarter of last year as the mobile phone operator confirmed it had moved into profit for 2002.

The company, which is jointly owned by Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Group and Deutsche Telekom's T-Mobile, won 370,530 new customers in the three-month period, boosting its total number of users to 2.4 million.

While its financial figures have yet to be released officially, Virgin Mobile is thought to have made an operating profit of about £5m for 2002 on sales of £290m.

At the pre-tax level, the company is expected to turn out a single-digit million pound loss for the year although on an underlying, or Ebitda basis, is thought to have made about a £16m profit compared with a loss of some £36m in 2001.

"2002 was the best year in Virgin Mobile's history ... it was the year we acquired our 2 millionth customer; it was the year we went into profit; and it was the year our turnover reached £290m," Sir Richard said.

He added: "2003 is going to be even better – by the end of the year we will have more than 3 million customers, and a turnover in excess of £400m."

The company, which launched in November of 1999, yesterday reported fourth-quarter sales of £92.2m, up from £75.1m in the previous quarter, and up from £57m in the fourth quarter of 2001.

Virgin Mobile is known as a "mobile virtual network operator" since it does not own its own telecoms network. Instead it buys a service from T-Mobile and resells it.

"Virgin Mobile is proving to be one of the most formidable companies in the Virgin empire, and one of the most dynamic in the telecoms industry," Sir Richard said. He also said yesterday that Virgin Mobile was still in talks to buy Finland's TeliaSonera's mobile phone unit but rated his chances of success as no greater than 50:50.