iBasis, a wholesale carrier of international long distance telephone calls, has posted a net loss $1.7m, or $0.02 per diluted and basic share, for the first quarter ended March 31, 2009, compared to a net loss of $2.1m, or $0.03 per diluted and basic share, for the same period in 2008.
Total revenue for the first quarter of 2009 declined to $255.51m from $324.9m in the same quarter of 2008. Adjusted EBITDA for the first quarter of 2009 was $9.7m, compared to adjusted EBITDA of $11.2m for the first quarter of 2008.
Customer traffic on the iBasis network in the first quarter 2009 was 5.1 billion minutes, compared to 5.8 billion minutes in first quarter of 2008. Average revenue per minute in the first quarter of 2009 was 4.97 cents, compared to 5.59 cents in same quarter of 2008.
Ofer Gneezy, president and CEO of iBasis, said: The results for this quarter demonstrate one of the underlying strengths of our business model: the same market forces that drive down average revenue per minute (ARPM), namely competition in the retail market and deregulation, also drive down average cost per minute and therefore have little net impact on iBasis.
As a result, while our ARPM declined from 5.88 cents in 2007, on a pro forma basis, to 5.63 cents in 2008 and 4.97 cents in first quarter of 2009, our average margin per minute for the corresponding periods remained constant at approximately 0.60 cents.