Deutsche Telekom exceeded its targets for 2015, with Tim Hoettges, CEO, stating it was “extremely successful on both sides of the Atlantic”.

“We are continuing on our path to becoming the leading European telecommunications provider with further strong investments in the future this year,” he continued.

Indeed, Telekom said it plans to “maintain growth while increasing investments” this year, with focus areas including increasing fibre and integrated products, increasing customer numbers, growing cloud revenue, and “yet further growth in mobile customer numbers in the United States”.

The company is planning to invest some €11.2 billion (before spectrum expenses), with a core element being “the buildout of the network infrastructure in terms of population coverage and increased transmission bandwidths”.

The company reported a Q4 net profit of €946 million, compared with a prior-year loss of €110 million, on revenue of €17.86 billion, up 5 per cent.

For the full year, profit was €3.25 billion, up 11.3 per cent, on revenue of €69.23 billion, up 10.5 per cent.

Telekom noted some benefits from foreign exchange, but even without this (and adjusted for changes in the group composition) full year revenue increased by 3 per cent.

In its home market, the company talked up growth in its fibre business, while acknowledging that in terms of mobile, the German market declined in size – although Telekom’s shrinkage was less than the average.

On the other side of the Atlantic, “T-Mobile US grew much faster than the other mobile operators in the United States in 2015 and at the same time managed to substantially improve profitability”.

Elsewhere in Europe, the operator said that “network buildout and integrated offers were among the leading issues for the European national companies in the past financial year”.

However, for this segment annual revenue declined, with Telekom noting “widely varying trends in the individual countries”.

The company ended the period with 156.4 million mobile customers.