Tesco Mobile has bounced back into profitability driven by British consumers' appetite for premium handsets including the Samsung Galaxy S24 series, it has emerged.
The provider, operating as a joint venture between the retail behemoth and Virgin Media 02, has delivered a pre-tax profit of £1.2m for 2024, according to fresh accounts lodged with Companies House, as reported by .
This marks a turnaround from the business sliding into a pre-tax loss of £449,000 in 2023.
The deficit followed Tesco Mobile recording a pre-tax profit of £8.3m in 2022.
The latest results also reveal the company's turnover climbed during its most recent financial year from £1bn to £1.1bn.
The Samsung Galaxy S24 series launched at the close of January 2024 and represented one of the flagship new handsets introduced to the º£½ÇÊÓƵ market last year.
Tesco Mobile hails 'strong performance'
A statement signed off by the board said: "The group delivered a strong performance in 2024 in a highly competitive mobile telecommunications market where overall handset market size continued to decline."
Tesco Mobile added that its revenue increased in the year thanks to a rise in sales of premiums handsets.
The company also said: "Market pressures and changes in customer behaviour saw a decline in prepay, partially offsetting postpay growth leaving the total closing customer base at 5.7m (2023: 5.5m)."
Tesco Mobile and Virgin Media 02 signed a ten-year renewal of their 50:50 joint venture agreement at the end of January 2024.
The enterprise was founded in 2003 and transformed into a joint venture in 2017. Earlier this year, Virgin Media O2 made waves when it revealed plans to establish a new communications and IT behemoth projected to generate around £1.4bn in turnover.
The group has agreed to merge its direct B2B operations with the Lancashire-based Daisy Group. The newly formed division will be spearheaded by Daisy Group's founder, Matthew Riley, as chairman, while Jo Bertram, the managing director of Virgin Media O2 Business, will take on the role of chief executive.
