Telecoms provider Colt's profit hurt by lower voice revenue

* FY pretax profit before exceptional items falls 45.8 pct

* FY revenue falls 5.1 pct to 1.49 bln euros

* One time hit of 31.1 mln euros due to withdrawal of voice contracts (Adds CEO comments, details, updates share movement, Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S profit estimate)

By Noor Zainab Hussain

Feb 26 (Reuters) - Telecommunications company Colt Group SA's full-year adjusted pretax profit fell 45.8 percent, slightly more than analysts had expected, as revenue dropped in its voice and IT services divisions.

Colt, which runs fibre optic networks and data centres for companies, said in April it would withdraw about 85 percent of its voice contracts as part of a strategic review, wiping out about 175 million euros in revenue.

The company said on Thursday its pretax profit before exceptional items fell to 23 million euros ($26 million) in the year ended Dec. 31 from 42.4 million euros a year earlier.

Luxembourg-domiciled Colt said it took a charge of 31.1 million euros related to the restructuring of its business including the withdrawal the contracts, resulting in pretax loss of 23.1 million euros on a reported basis.

Total (Swiss: FP.SW - news) revenue fell 5.1 percent to 1.49 billion euros, while Voice services revenue slid 18.3 percent to 452.1 million euros.

Analysts on average had expected a pretax profit of 23.37 million euros before exceptional items on revenue of 1.5 billion euros, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

"Our performance in 2014 did not deliver what we set out to achieve, but we begin 2015 with reasonable momentum and a focused organisation." Chief Executive Rakesh Bhasin said in a statement.

Revenue in the company's IT services division, which is being restructured, slipped 2.4 percent to 77.8 million euros.

Bhasin told Reuters on Thursday that about 150 jobs had been cut from the business. Colt has just over 5,000 employees.

J.P Morgan Cazenove analysts said Colt's EBITDA valuation was attractive and noted the company's progress in repositioning itself to differentiate on service rather than price.

"However, we believe it will always be difficult for Colt to generate meaningful cash flow as a standalone in the enterprise telecoms market due to challenging demand/supply characteristics and inferior economies of scale vs. its competition," the analysts wrote in a research note.

Colt's shares were down 1.2 percent at 148.5 pence at 1251 GMT on the London Stock Exchange (Other OTC: LDNXF - news) .

($1 = 0.8798 euros) (Reporting by Noor Zainab Hussain in Bengaluru; Editing by Ted Kerr)