Mobile group O2 Ireland said it expected service revenue for the 12 months to the end of March 2005 to be higher than anticipated.
In a trading statement today, O2 Ireland said it expected growth to be between 12 and 15 per cent.
The group's parent company, O2, said it expected service revenue growth to slow to a mid-single-digit rate next financial year as the British-based mobile phone group announced 500 job cuts to help pay for 2,000 new UK call centre staff.
Reiterating its guidance for the year to end-March 2005, O2 also forecast earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) in line with analysts' average expectation of £1.75 billion, and underlying earnings per share slightly below the mid-point of a range from 8 pence to more than 9 pence.
But some analysts had been hoping for either raised guidance for UK service revenue growth this year or an indication that O2 might hit the higher end of its 12 to 15 per cent growth target.
The company's shares fell 2.64 per cent to 120 pence by and were the biggest decliner in the FTSE 100 index.
Analysts had expected O2, which has about 23.2 million subscribers across Britain, Germany and Ireland, to forecast a relatively sharp slowdown in UK service revenue growth next year as customer growth slows. For this year to end-March 2005, O2 has forecast 12 to 15 per cent growth in British service revenue and a stable UK EBITDA margin.