Mihai Ghyka, the chief executive of Bergenbier brewer until May, was appointed chief commercial officer consumer – business unit by mobile network operator Vodafone Romania. With revenue of EUR835.6 million in the year ended in March, Vodafone is the second-largest operator and Ghyka will be the number two in the company as of June 20.
“The beer and telecom industries have competitiveness in common. In both industries, Romania is a place where world giants clash. The similarities end here, though,” Ghyka told ZF. As for telecom, he said he finds it “fascinatingly difficult.”
The new manager of the consumer business unit takes his position at a time when the Romanian mobile market continues to feel the fallout of the crisis and of consumer cautiousness in terms of spending even though statistics show an increase in the number of users of new segments such as mobile Internet services and smartphones.
Vodafone has strong rivals on the Romanian market – Orange, the market leader, Cosmote and Romtelecom, companies owned by the same shareholders. The latter two, backed by Deutsche Telekom (the main shareholder of the Greek group OTE), might merge.
On top of that, Vodafone is also in competition with Romanian-held RCS&RDS, whose service packages are aggressively priced, keeping the market on its toes, even though it is still lagging behind in terms of service coverage.
The latest financial data published by Vodafone show a significant decline in the number of customers in the last three months of the fiscal year (January – March 2011) by 312,921 post-paid and 294,337 pre-paid users. The company pinned the trend on the change of reporting standards and disconnection of inactive cards. Its revenue in the fiscal year ended March 2011 stood at EUR835.6 million, down 9% on the year, while EBITDA amounted to EUR305.6 million, down by more than 22%.