Telecom Argentina's CEO Discusses Q3 2011 Results - Earnings Call Transcript

In this context, sectors like Banking, retail business, durable goods production and constructions were the main drivers of growth during the quarter. The recent decline in commodity prices and the international financial crisis has presented a more challenging scenario for Argentina with harder external financial conditions where slower global growth pace is expected.

Regarding local consumptions, spending was driven largely by negative real interest rates which encouraged consumer lending. Also, disposable income rose significantly due to real wage increases and the increasing government transfers to social security programs. Consumer confidence remains in its four-year record albeit inflation continues to be the main concern in the local economy.

On the fiscal front, fiscal surplus suffered a decline due to higher public spending related to the already mentioned causes such as transfers to social plans and subsidies to the private sector. In the external sector, imports rose significantly due to energy imports that more than doubled in the past year. In the third quarter, strong capital outflows affected local interest rates and added pressure to the local FX market, probably reducing aggregate demand in the following quarters.

In this challenging macroeconomic context for Argentina, our company continues to report outstanding growth and results both in terms of business and financials and we’ll be highlighting during this conference call.

And having gone through this introduction let me pass the call to Franco Bertone who will go over the business highlights. Franco?

Franco Bertone

Thank you, Pedro and good morning everyone. We really had an outstanding performance this quarter, and mobile business continues to beat the markets and our fixed business is a very, very healthy growth. Our mobile business maintained a consistent growth in the postpaid segment including subscriber mix and increases in customer base profitability.

We continue to focus in value-added services where we target every client having mobile internet access, creating client and services packs design to meet the needs of each customer in this segment.

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