Jose Maria Alvarez-Pallete, who was named Telefonica SA (TEF)’s head of Europe yesterday, said emerging markets will be key for the telecommunications industry in the next few years and his company should boost investment in technology in Latin America.
“Latin America will continue to grow in the future as it’s come out of the current crisis much stronger,” Alvarez-Pallete, former chief of Latin American operations, said today at a conference in Santander, Spain.
Telefonica, Spain’s biggest phone company, said yesterday it’s folding its struggling domestic unit into a European division and shuffled the heads of its regional businesses as it tries to halt a slide in its stock. Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Cesar Alierta, 66, is counting on Latin American growth to boost revenue, with Spain’s 21 percent unemployment rate hampering its business in its domestic market.
Telefonica SA expects both revenue and profit from its digital operations, including Tuenti and Jajah, to be a “positive surprise” in the coming months, Alvarez-Pallete said. The company will likely also benefit as well from a surge in data traffic in emerging markets such as Brazil, he said.
Original Article: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-06/telefonica-says-emerging-markets-key-for-increasing-sales.html