Telefonica saw its Q1 figures negatively impacted by foreign exchange issues around its Latin American operations, but talked up positive indicators for its business.

Jose Maria Alvarez-Pallete, newly-installed executive chairman of Telefonica, said that “in a context of intense technological disruption and transformation, our first quarter results reflected a strengthening of the business across the board and of the capacity of our platforms which is enabling us to reach more customers with higher value products and services”.

A particular highlight for the company was a return to OIBDA growth in Spain, meaning it saw growth at this level across all operating businesses.

But the company made little reference to its planned sale of its UK business to CK Hutchison, against a growing expectation that European regulators may move to block the deal. It did note positives from the operation including cash flow growth resulting from OIBDA improvements.

On a group level, the company reported a profit for the period of €776 million, down from €1.8 billion last year, on revenue of €10.78 billion, down 6.6 per cent.

It said that last year the bottom line benefitted from a “non-recurrent positive financial impact” related to the ongoing O2 UK sales process: excluding this, net profit for the quarter rose by 26 per cent.

On an operating level (OIBDA), this year’s €3.38 billion was down 6.7 per cent year-on-year, which was attributed to currency rate changes related to Telefonica’s Latin America operations. On an organic basis, OIBDA increased by 5.5 per cent.

On an organic basis, revenue increased by 3.4 per cent. Again, the reported number was impacted by foreign exchange issues.

Telefonica ended the period with 246.85 million mobile connections, down 2.3 per cent year-on-year, with drops in the prepaid base partially offset by growth in more lucrative contract subscribers.

Its LTE customer base (35.6 million) represented 15 percent of the total connections, up 9 points.

Mobile data revenue grew 19.9 per cent year-on-year on an organic basis, to represent 48 per cent of mobile service revenue, which was attributed to higher smartphone penetration and growing LTE take-up.