Oct 21 Saudi Arabia's Etihad Etisalat (Mobily), which restated 27 months of earnings earlier this year, said rising expenses were to blamed as it swung to third-quarter net loss on Wednesday.
Mobily, an affiliate of the United Arab Emirates' Etisalat , made a net loss of 158 million riyals ($42.1 million) in the three months to Sept. 30, it said in a bourse statement.
That compared with a profit of 129 million riyals in the prior-year period.
NCB Capital had forecast Mobily would make a quarterly profit of 245 million riyals.
Mobily attributed its quarterly loss to a 235 million riyal increase in general and administrative expenses, plus an extra 56 million riyals in finance charges.
In late July, Mobily restated its results for the 27 months to March 31, slashing total profits over the period by about 1.76 billion riyals in its latest attempt to resolve an accounting scandal. It then reported a second-quarter loss of 900.9 million riyals.
The company had attributed its woes to the premature booking of revenue from wholesale broadband leases and mobile promotional campaigns and it has also made further changes to the way it accounts for some contracts and the depreciation of property and equipment.
($1 = 3.7497 riyals) (Reporting by Matt Smith; Editing by David French)