Zain posted a 2% increase in its revenues for the first half to record $2.38 billion, discounting cash inflow and capital gain in the wake of the sale of the Zain Africa assets, closed in June 2010.

The company’s net profit also rose by 17% to $506.5 million, in comparison to the figures from last year for the same period.

Zain also recorded a 16% year-on-year growth in subscriber base across its all operations, and as on 30 June, 2011, the telco boasted of 39.6 million active subscribers. In the same vein, there were 5.4 million new adopters of the Zain Group in the last twelve months; Saudi Arabia contributing the highest with 32% growth, and accounting for 9.1 million customers in total while Sudan witnessing a 24% growth, taking the tally of customers to 11.4 million. In addition, the subscriber base for Zain Kuwait rose by 7%, propelling the number of customers to 2 million while Jordan with 5.5% increase and Iraq 5.2% saw their customer base reach 2.7 million and 12.3 million respectively.

The Chairman of the Board of Directors of Zain, Mr Asaad Al Banwan stated that although consolidated revenues increased a moderate 2%, it gratifies the company that it attained an impressive 17% net income growth and EBIT and EBITDA growth of both 6% respectively. In addition, these results augur well, especially when one considers that the net profit for the half year was adversely affected by currency fluctuations of an amount of $ 75 million.

While Zain Group CEO Mr Nabeel Bin Salamah noted that Zain has emerged as the market leader in terms of customer numbers across five of its seven operations. He also stated that the telco is all set to concluding an outsourcing agreement with an unnamed vendor.