Deutsche Telekom confirms full-year forecast

German telecoms giant Deutsche Telekom said Thursday it was sticking to its full-year target for stable earnings after clocking up a solid performance in the second quarter. "We recorded stable earnings and a solid growth trend free cash flow in the second quarter of 2012. On the back of this performance, the board of management has confirmed its guidance for the full year," Deutsche Telekom said in a statement. Full-year underlying profit was therefore projected to come out at around 18 billion euros ($22 billion), compared with 18.7 billion euros in 2011. "Plans for a minimum dividend payment of 0.70 euros per share remain unchanged," it added. "We are keeping our word and providing a good deal of reliability to the market with very solid figures," said chief executive Rene Obermann. "We do of course continue to face a number of challenges, but we are performing very respectably compared with our competitors," he said. In the second quarter alone, Deutsche Telekom's bottom-line net profit jumped by 76.4 percent to 614 million euros. But that was largely because the previous year's figure had been inflated by special factors, the group explained. Adjusted net profit declined by 13.9 percent to 819 million euros a result of charges connected with its US unit, T-Mobile USA. Adjusted underlying profit, as measured by earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) edged up by 0.2 percent to 4.697 billion euros for the period from April to June, while sales slipped by 0.7 percent to 14.379 billion euros.