Turkcell defies current with high expectations

Bloomberg

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"We expect our revenue will be higher in 2009," Ciliv said Monday at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Ciliv is more optimistic than analysts who follow the company. Analysts predict Turkcell, Turkey’s biggest wireless company, will have sales of $5.99 billion this year, down from an estimated $6.19 billion in 2008, based on the average estimates compiled by Bloomberg since the company reported third-quarter earnings in November.

Turkcell, which is looking to expand in the neighboring countries, is trying to decide about making a final bid for Macedonia’s Cosmofon Mobile Telecommunications Services AD Skopje and is analyzing another company in Kosovo. Turkcell has been studying Cosmofon and talking to the management, Ciliv said.

"So far everything looks good," he said. The Cosmofon asset is being sold by Cosmote Mobile Telecommunications SA, the wireless unit of Greece’s Hellenic Telecommunications Organization SA.

Turkcell added 650,000 customers in the fourth quarter, and had a total of 37 million subscribers in Turkey at the end of 2008, an increase of 5 percent from a year earlier, Deputy Chief Executive Officer Koray Öztürkler said Feb. 6.

The company will spend more than $500 million on a license for a high-speed wireless network, Ciliv said.