Telefonica said it expects its 2017 revenue will be stable compared with 2016, despite higher regulatory impacts mainly in its European markets.

It said the organic growth rates of the business continued to increase, reflecting a “strengthened competitive position, due to the company’s differential infrastructure and the investment undertaken”.

The Spain-based company announced a profit for Q4 2016 of €145 million, compared with a loss of €2.2 billion in Q4 2015, on revenue of €13.7 billion, down from €13.9 billion. It said on an organic basis, revenue increased by 2.7 per cent, driven by “the solid performance of service revenue”.

For the full year, profit of €2.4 billion was up from €616 million, on revenue of €52 billion, down from €54.9 million. Full year revenue would have grown 3.6 per cent organically excluding the negative impact of regulation.

The fourth quarter also saw an impact of €1.3 billion related to restructuring costs, which Telefonica said will “generate additional savings and improve efficiency”.

Telefonica said it is “well diversified across markets in terms of revenue”, with Spain accounting for 24.4 per cent, Latin America 24.2 per cent, Brazil 21.3 per cent, Germany 14.4 per cent, and UK 13.2 per cent (on a full year basis).

Mobile data revenue represented 52 per cent of total mobile service revenue for the full year, due to the increased penetration of smartphones and LTE.

Population coverage of Telefonica’s 4G networks stood at 62 per cent, up 10 points year-on-year, with UK (95 per cent) and Spain (91 per cent) leading Germany (79 per cent), Brazil (60 per cent) and LatAm (49 per cent).

Telefonica has 66.3 million LTE customers, a 1.8-times increase.

The company ended the period with 276.5 million mobile connections, of which around 60 per cent are prepaid, with a 2 point shift in the year in favour of contract subscriptions.