Annual Report 2008 TeliaSonera Annual Report 2008 Content This is TeliaSonera 3 The Year in Brief 4 Letter from the CEO 5 The TeliaSonera Share 7 Corporate Strategy 9 Market and Customers 10 A Review of Our Operations 18 Corporate Responsibility 25 Report of the Directors 30 Consolidated Income Statements 42 Consolidated Balance Sheets 43 Consolidated Cash Flow Statements 44 Consolidated Statements of Changes in Equity 45 Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements 46 Parent Company Income Statements 89 Parent Company Balance Sheets 90 Parent Company Cash Flow Statements 91 Parent Company Statements of Changes in Shareholders’ Equity 92 Notes to Parent Company Financial Statements 93 Proposed Appropriation of Earnings 108 Auditors’ Report 109 Ten-year Summary Financial Data 110 Ten-year Summary Operational Data 111 Definitions 113 Corporate Governance Report 115 Board of Directors including Remuneration 119 Leadership Team including Remuneration 121 Glossary 123 Annual General Meeting 2009 124 Contact TeliaSonera 125 TeliaSonera AB (publ), SE-106 63 Stockholm, Sweden Corporate Reg. No. 556103-4249, Registered office: Stockholm, Telephone: +46 (0)8 504 550 00, www.teliasonera.com TeliaSonera Annual Report 2008 – Introduction This is TeliaSonera Mobility Services Broadband Services Eurasia TeliaSonera provides telecommunication services in the Nordic and Baltic countries, the emerging markets of Eurasia, including Russia and Turkey, and in Spain. We offer services that help people and companies communicate in an easy, efficient and environmentally friendly way. Our main purpose is to best serve our customers and create value for our shareholders through providing competitive services as well as generating sustainable and improving profits and cash flows. We develop our operational excellence by focusing on creating a world-class service company, securing quality in our networks and achieving a best-in-class cost structure. That is how we create value. TeliaSonera is listed on the NASDAQ OMX Stockholm and Helsinki stock exchanges. 3 TeliaSonera Annual Report 2008 – Introduction The Year in Brief Highlights and Achievements Improved customer satisfaction Customer satisfaction improved in most of our Nordic and Baltic businesses and employee commitment was the highest to date. Strengthened positions in Eurasia We strengthened our market positions further in Eurasia and expanded to two new high-growth markets, Nepal and Cambodia. Apple iPhone 3G and mobile broadband Apple iPhone 3G gave a tremendous boost to our brands and together with mobile broadband drove mobile data usage higher. 4G – the next generation mobile networks 4G-licenses in Sweden and Norway and plan to launch 4G commercially as one of the first operators in the world in 2010. Strong subscription growth The number of subscriptions grew 17 percent to 135 million in 2008. We are now in 20 markets with 450 million inhabitants. Financial Highlights SEK in millions except key ratios, per share data and margins 2008 2007 2006 Net sales 103,585 96,344 91,060 EBITDA, excluding non-recurring items 32,954 31,021 32,266 Margin (%) 31.8 32.2 35.4 Operating income 28,648 26,155 25,489 Operating income, excluding non-recurring items 30,041 27,478 26,751 Net income 21,442 20,298 19,283 of which attributable to shareholders of the parent company 19,011 17,674 16,987 Earnings per share (SEK) 4.23 3.94 3.78 Return on equity (%, rolling 12 months) 17.2 18.6 17.2 CAPEX-to-sales (%) 15.2 14.0 12.2 Free cash flow 11,328 13,004 16,596 Net sales and EBITDA, excluding non-recurring items EPS and Dividends Net sales EBITDA SEK per share SEK billion SEK billion 7 106 33.5 6 104 33.0 5 102 32.5 4 100 3 32.0 98 2 31.5 96 1 31.0 94 0 92 30.5 EPS Dividend EPS Dividend EPS Proposed Dividend 90 30.0 2006 2007 2008 2006 2007 2008 Net sales EBITDA, excluding non-recurring items EPS Ordinary dividend Extraordinary dividend 4 TeliaSonera Annual Report 2008 – Introduction Letter from the CEO Dear Shareholders, TeliaSonera continued growing in 2008 and is now present in 20 markets with 450 million inhabitants and subscriptions of 135 million. We reported record-high earnings in 2008. Net income rose 5.6 percent to SEK 21.4 billion, a new record for TeliaSonera. This was driven by Mobility Services, which achieved growth and higher profitability, despite regulatory intervention and intense competition in the Nordic and Baltic markets, and by strong performance in business area Eurasia. Eurasia is the growth engine of TeliaSonera. With less developed fixed-line infrastructure and relatively low mobile penetration, the growth potential lies in growing the customer base significantly, increasing mobile usage, and further ahead also in increasing usage of mobile data. Create a world-class service company “Creating a world-class service This is perhaps the most challenging of our priorities as it is both company and securing quality in our complex and requires a major change of processes, attitude and focus in many parts of the company. I am pleased to see that networks are fundamental for our customer satisfaction, according to the European Performance success.” Satisfaction Index (EPSI), improved in most of our Nordic and Baltic businesses during 2008. In Eurasia we strengthened our market Lars Nyberg, President and CEO, TeliaSonera positions further. One driver of service improvement is employee satisfaction. Therefore, I am encouraged that we saw employee In our more mature markets, usage of mobile broadband and data satisfaction and commitment improve in 2008 to the highest level has exploded. Mobile data traffic in our Nordic and Baltic operations since TeliaSonera started measurements in 2004. jumped close to 500 percent in 2008. More advanced and attractive Secure quality in our networks devices designed for easy surfing contribute strongly to this trend. Demand for capacity is virtually unlimited and requires network up- The Apple iPhone 3G was introduced in 2008 and gave a grades. Capital expenditure was SEK 15.8 billion in 2008 and in- tremendous boost to our brands in the Nordic and Baltic region. Data cluded investments in increased network capacity and coverage and usage among Apple iPhone 3G customers is significantly higher than upgrades to support new value-added services. among users of other handsets. The strong trend for mobile data and broadband will put further In Broadband Services, profitability decreased as a continued increased demands on the capacity of our networks. We now have decline in fixed-voice sales was not totally offset by higher sales of 4G licenses in Sweden and Norway and aim to be one of the first new, IP-based services and by cost-efficiency measures. As a result operators in the world to launch 4G commercially in 2010. 4G will we did not fully reach our ambition of maintaining the group EBITDA- increase capacity dramatically, enabling significantly faster down- margin level. This confirms that our earlier plans to increase cost loading of large quantities of multimedia. efficiency and the measures we are taking in this part of the We have the best mobile networks in Sweden, according to EPSI, organization are necessary. and in 2008 we reduced the number of dropped mobile calls. 2008 was a year marked by financial turmoil and macro-economic In Eurasia we also improved service quality in the networks, slowdown. The downturn became much more severe as the year particularly in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Nepal. progressed, and the global economy was exceptionally weak in the fourth quarter. TeliaSonera operates in a relatively non-cyclical or Best-in-class cost structure late-cyclical industry and we saw no marked effect on our earnings. TeliaSonera cannot have structurally higher costs than its compe- titors. Intensified efficiency improvement is crucial for TeliaSonera to Six focus areas be able to adjust its cost base to reflect the shift from traditional to new, value-added services, especially from fixed-voice to mobile and Our core business is to offer services that help people and IP-based services. We are carefully going through our operations in companies communicate in an easy, efficient and environmentally order to reduce complexity and the number of products and services. friendly way. Our purpose is to best serve our customers and create value for our shareholders through providing competitive services, as Migrate our traditional fixed-voice customers to new, well as generating sustainable and improving profits and cash flows. value-added services We operate in one of the world’s most rapidly changing, demand- Our fixed-voice business in Sweden has been declining for several ing and competitive industries. When I joined TeliaSonera in 2007, I years already as a growing share of customers choose to no longer realized that in order to succeed and act as one company we need to have a traditional fixed-voice service. Our best asset is our large change the company culture and our behavior, particularly in the customer base and our challenge is to keep it. We transform our Swedish and Finnish businesses. All our discussions have to start business through providing IP-based communication and content with the customer and we need to raise our sense of urgency. I am services at competitive cost and with the best customer service. We now starting to see a change in our behavior. This is a result of the have a real opportunity to offer the market triple play and a string of strengthening of our Leadership Team, the introduction of a more value-added services. Since our launch of IPTV at the beginning of stringent performance and consequence management attitude and 2007, the number of IPTV subscriptions in Sweden has grown to rigorous attention to our six focus areas. 324,000 and including all Nordic and Baltic markets to 477,000.