The latest earnings results for French telecommunications giant Orange, covering its fiscal third quarter as of Sept. 30, showed an increase in customer base, mixed growth across Europe and strong performance in the Middle East and Africa.
In terms of headline numbers, the firm announced on Tuesday (Oct. 26) that it had registered 11.3 million convergent customers — customers using multiple products and services — group-wide as of Sept. 30, an increase of about 3% year on year.
Mobile services also increased by close to 5% year on year, reaching 221.8 million lines, while mobile financial services had nearly 1.6 million customers in Europe and 600,000 customers in Africa.
However, revenue for the leading telecom operator dropped by 0.4% year on year to 10.5 billion euros ($12.2 million), mainly due to a decline in the co-financing received from other operators on its fiber network, as well as a slowdown in equipment sales following a peak in Q2 after lockdowns were lifted.
“Orange’s sustained commercial performance in the third quarter, marked by solid momentum in retail services across all the countries where we are present, allows us to confirm all of our financial commitments,” Stéphane Richard, the group’s chairman and chief executive officer, said in a statement announcing the results.
Richard added, “In an economy still showing the effects of the health crisis, including the acceleration of the digital transformation, our customers’ appetite for very high-speed access is evidenced in their take up of fiber and 5G, and of our convergent offers.”
Earlier this year, PYMNTS reported that Orange is aiming to fast-track the development of new ultra-high-speed networks like 5G by investing in U.S. venture capital fund Venture Reality Fund II, dedicated to immersive technologies.
Read more: Orange Wants To Fast-Track 5G With Investment In Venture Fund
The move is also expected to help Orange, the first European telecommunications firm to invest in the fund, to finance technologies in the extended reality (XR) space, such as artificial intelligence (AI), virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR).
ME&A Top Performance in EMEA
Orange said lockdowns affected revenues from its European markets — Spain, Poland, Belgium and Luxembourg, Romania, Slovakia, and Moldova — which were down 1.1% in the third quarter compared to 2020. But the region showed strong commercial performance driven by positive net sales of fixed broadband in all the countries.
Across its European markets, revenue from retail services grew by 2%, except for Spain where it fell by 4.4%. The company said the Spanish market remains very fragmented while recovering from the pandemic, but that results are “encouraging” given that revenue from retail services continues to improve quarter by quarter.
In France, Orange fiber uptake increased 36% year on year, with 5.6 million customers secured in the country.
Other highlights of the quarter showed that both Africa and the Middle East remain strong growth engines for the French telecom company, generating a double-digit increase (12%) in revenue in the third quarter, driven by strong retail sales, the rapidly expanding mobile data market and an increasing 4G customer base, among others.
Orange now has more than 40 million 4G customers in the two regions, a 33.6% increase compared to last year.
As part of its 2022 plans for the Middle East, the French telecom operator recently announced plans to inject $300 million in new investments in Egypt, one of its biggest markets in the region.
Related: French Telecom Company To Launch Bank This Summer
The operator now owns 100% of Orange Bank, which it launched in France back in 2017 — and in 2019 in Spain — to provide banking services designed around our customers’ mobile uses. The bank currently reaches 1.6 million customers and its subsidiary, Orange Bank Africa, now counts 600,000 customers in Cote d’Ivoire alone.
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