Middle East and African mobile firm Zain has reported a solid set of financials for full-year 2008, including a 50 percent increase in subscribers. Company revenues jumped 26 percent year-on-year to US$7.44 billion, while net profit rose 6 percent to US$1.2 billion, translating to US$0.33 per share. Its active customer base rose to 63.5 million, in part due to new network launches in Ghana and Saudi Arabia. In a statement, CEO Dr Saad Al Barrak said the Kuwait-based operator spent over US$3 billion in network upgrades in 2008 in markets such as Ghana, Iraq, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia and Sudan. “Overall, due to our massive network investment across all operations, we expect and are targeting a 30 percent increase on many of our financial indicators in 2009,” he said. “We firmly believe that the Zain brand will act as a catalyst and propel the company to our 2011 target of being a top-ten global operator.”

Dr Al Barrak also hinted that the ambitious operator is looking at further acquisitions. “Zain views [the global economic crisis] as an opportunity to make further acquisitions given valuations of many prime telecom assets are considerably lower than they were just six months ago and we are actively pursuing such prospects,” he said. He added that the firm was also looking at “share swapping with and acquiring minority stake deals in other telecom operations.”