At group level the operator generated revenues of €10.07 billion in the three months to the end of June, flat compared with the same quarter a year earlier, while restated EBITDA came in at €3.34 billion, up by 0.1% on a comparable basis.
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Orange Group Chairman and CEO Stéphane Richard said: “The first-half results again confirm the Group’s positive momentum, enabling us to reaffirm our objective of growth in restated EBITDA for the year 2016”.
In Africa and the Middle East, the mobile customer base trend (108.5 million customers at 30 June 2016) was affected by a strengthened requirement to verify the identities of customers in certain countries.
The telco’s growth engine, its Africa and Middle East business posted a 2.3% Q2 revenue hike to €1.25 billion, having reported on-year growth of 4.4% in the previous quarter.
Group revenues were 20.079 billion euros in the first-half of 2016, up 0.3% on a comparable basis, a continuation of 0.3% growth seen in the second-half half of 2015. The Enterprise segment rose 1.2% over the half, led by IT and integration services. Orange’s home market was also hit by the increased appetite for SIM-only deals, which now account for 58 percent of retail contracts, up 14 percentage points on 2015. In the second quarter, EBITDA rose 0.1 percent after falling 1.6 percent in the first quarter.
This decline had the largest effect in France, where mobile service revenues increased their decline from 2.4 percent in the first quarter to 5.2 percent in the second. The Paris-based operator reiterated its target for rising full-year Ebitda.
Net income of Orange was 3.323 billion euros in the first half of 2016 (+2.050 billion euros) mainly related to the sale of EE which occurred in January 2016. “We will keep a selective acquisition policy privileging our current geographical areas and value creation”.
Orange has made investment in high-speed fixed and mobile broadband such as fiber, 4G and 4G+ to boost data business. It also said it plans to propose a dividend of EUR0.60 a share.
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In Europe overall, 4G customers were up almost three times since past year to 22.7 million at the end of June, while its number of fibre broadband customers more than tripled to 2.56 million.
