Telenor CFO says internal ambition is higher than 2014 guidance

OSLO (Reuters) - Norwegian telecoms group Telenor reported fourth-quarter core earnings below expectations on Wednesday and said it expected stable margins in 2014.

State-controlled Telenor's adjusted earnings before interest, depreciation and amortisation rose 9.6 percent to 8.99 billion crowns, missing expectations for 9.20 billion crowns in a Reuters poll.

Following are comments by top executives at an analyst briefing:

Richard Aa, CFO

"It's early in the year, and given the uncertainties, we think it's prudent to guide in line with 2013, but the internal ambition is definitely higher."

"You may think that (our EBITDA margin guidance) is on the conservative side, and yes we definitely have higher ambitions internally to beat that. Our ambition on the cost side is even higher in 2014 than in 2013."

"It is vital going forward to get Norway back on positive growth momentum."

"We are running at a high capex levels, and this will continue in to 2014."

"The Indian total peak funding frame has been met now. We are still within the 155 bln frame, but we have now passed that phase in India."

"In order for us to improve from 2013 we need to see stronger trends in the mobile operations in Norway, on the underlying mobile service revenue growth. We also need to see a continued growth momentum in India. And we need to see a more stable political situation in Bangladesh and Thailand."

Jon Fredrik Baksaas, CEO

"We added 17 million subscribers in 2013, of which 5 million in the final three months. This growth was mainly driven by India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. These countries will still represent a significant potential for growth going forward."

"In Thailand the migration of customers to our new 3G network is progressing well and we see a solid underlying service revenue growth from data in our Thai operation. But at the same time the regulatory and political backdrop in Thailand has proven more difficult than expected."

"We expect to redeploy 5,000 sites in India to accommodate geographic expansion in existing circles."

(Reporting by Joachim Dagenborg)