CAIRO: The Egyptian Company for Mobile Services, Mobinil, reported that it had lost some 17.8 percent of its trading value during the second quarter of this year. Shares in the company were at 157.6 Egyptian pounds on March 31and have dropped to 105 Egyptian pounds, to lose about 33.3 percent of its value. The recent drop is blamed on the what is called in the media as the “Mickey crisis,” a cartoon that Naguib Sawiris, CEO of the company, tweeted via his personal account on Twitter that featured a picture of Mickey Mouse with a Salafi dress and a beard and Mini Mouse wearing the Islamic veil, or niqab. The tweet drew massive criticism of Sawiris and many of the company's customers switched to other companies. Religious groups in Egypt asked Egyptians to boycott Mobinil as a result. Mobinil's indices semi-annual consolidated for the year 2011 reported a net loss of 85.7 million pounds compared to a net profit of 732.3 million pounds for the first half of 2010. The net loss for the company during the second quarter of 2011 was 108.47 million pounds, a massive drop from the net profit of 378.7 million pounds in the same period in 2010 and a net profit of the company during the first quarter of 2011 of some 22.7 million pounds, while the total number of users as of June 30, 2011, was approximately 30.541 million subscribers. BM
