DENIS O’BRIEN’S Digicel telecoms group has achieved its target of 450 voluntary redundancies across its Caribbean operations.

The move will cost it about $3 million (€2.3 million) and the reduction in staff numbers includes about 50 expats whose contracts were not renewed.

“We have our full numbers,” Digicel vice-chairman Leslie Buckley told me during an interview for today’s paper.

Buckley said the business was in good shape financially and dismissed market rumours that the cull was prompted by its high debt levels. “Like any business, there comes a time when it’s prudent to reduce costs. Financially, we are in a very good situation.

“In some countries the growth has levelled out because you mature. But we’ve just launched in Honduras and Panama. We’ll have one million subscribers in both by the end of our financial year in March [31st].”

Buckley said Digicel’s launch formula is simple. “We invest in the infrastructure, we roll it out fast, we spend a lot of money on marketing and developing our brand, and we put our arms around the market as fast as possible and as early as possible.”

The Caribbean market is saturated by Digicel, although the Bahamas is an obvious exception. The government there recently put a majority stake in the state-owned fixed-line telco up for sale.

“It’s something we’re looking at,” Buckley said. “We’ve always been interested in the Bahamas, there’s good opportunities there, [but] we prefer a greenfield situation.”

Digicel’s expansion focus is primarily on Central America and the Pacific Rim. “At any one time we’re looking at another six or seven countries,” he said.

But the United States, once much talked about as a target for Digicel, is not on the agenda. “You never say no but certainly not for the next 12 months. We looked at doing an MVNO [a virtual network piggy backing on an existing mobile player] there but we decided at the time that we were better off pulling back and investing our money in other areas and that proved to be the correct decision.”

While profitable at an operating level, large interest payments ($296 million in fiscal 2008) keep Digicel in the red. But Buckley said it is well funded and has “no problem” meeting its $1.4 billion debt.

“We’re in a very healthy situation,” he said. “The business would be very profitable if we didn’t keep investing but the right thing to do is to keep investing.”