Revenues down 3.8% year-on-year, but mobile subscriber losses in France stemmed.

April 29, 2014

4 Min Read

PARIS --

  • Commercial momentum remained strong, led by new mobile contract offers in Europe and growth in Africa and the Middle East.
    - in France, the growth in mobile contracts remained very strong, with net sales of 86,000 contracts in the 1st quarter, whereas previous first quarters since 2010 recorded negative net sales. The Origami and Open premium offers represented more than 60% of gross consumer sales during the quarter. The acceleration of fibre-optic sales was confirmed with 47,000 new customers in the 1st quarter, giving a base of 365,000 customers at 31 March 2014 (+15% in three months).
    - in Spain, mobile contracts increased 6.4% year on year, led by the rapid growth in SIM-only offers, while growth accelerated in the fixed broadband customer base (+23.7%) with the success of the Canguro convergent offers.
    - in Poland, mobile contracts confirmed the recovery started in the 4th quarter of 2013 with a return to positive portability, and the Orange Open convergent offers increased very sharply (5x year on year).
    - in Africa and the Middle East, the mobile customer base grew considerably (+11.4% year on year) with 91.3 million customers at 31 March 2014 (including 3.3 million net additions in the 1st quarter). Orange Money had 9.9 million customers at 31 March 2014. - the Orange Group had a total of 239.4 million customers at 31 March 2014, a year-on-year increase of 4.2% (+9.6 million net additions).

    • Consolidated revenues were 9.804 billion euros, a 3.8% decrease on a comparable basis. Excluding the impact of regulatory measures, the decrease was 3.0%, an improvement of 0.8 percentage points compared to the 4th quarter 2013 figure, which primarily related to France and the Enterprise segment.
      - in France, the revenue decline slowed to 4.9% after falling 6.2% in the 4th quarter of 2013 (+1.3 percentage points). The improvement was related to both fixed and mobile services.
      - in Spain, growth (+3.2%) was slightly higher than in the 4th quarter of 2013 (+2.7%), led by mobile handset sales on instalment payment plans and by fixed services.
      - in Poland, revenues from mobile services gradually improved to a 1.0% decline after falling 2.2% in the 4th quarter of 2013: the growth in the customer base offset the effect of price reductions.
      - in the Rest of World segment, revenues were generally stable at -0.2%. Europe, which decreased 8.4% after declining 9.2% in the 4th quarter of 2013, continued to be impacted by price reductions in Belgium and Slovakia, while revenues in Romania grew 4.9%. Revenues in Africa and the Middle East continued to rise steadily, up 6.0% led by Mali, Guinea and Côte d’Ivoire.
      - in the Enterprise segment, the revenue decline was limited to 2.3% in the 1st quarter of 2014, an improvement in relation to the 4th quarter of 2013 (-4.5%), in particular due to the IT and services integration products (cloud computing +19%, security solutions +36%)

    • Restated EBITDA was 3.017 billion euros. The restated EBITDA margin (30.8%) was stable compared to the 1st quarter of 2013 on a comparable basis. The cost reduction of 267 million euros offset 69% of the revenue decline (-387 million euros). Direct costs were reduced by 5.9% (152 million euros) and indirect costs were reduced by 2.6% (114 million euros).

    • CAPEX was 1.161 billion euros, an investment rate of 11.8% of revenues (+0.6% percentage points compared to the 1st quarter of 2013 on a comparable basis) on continuing growth in fixed and mobile very high-speed broadband.

      Commenting on the results for the 1st quarter of 2014, Stéphane Richard, Chairman and CEO of the Orange Group, said: “Orange’s first quarter 2014 performance was very satisfactory, aided in large part by the continued strong commercial momentum in our core countries. Orange benefits from the efficient segmentation of its offers as well as its investment in very high-speed broadband – fibre and 4G – which enable the Group to differentiate itself from the competition.

      Continued efforts to improve the Group’s cost structure allowed us to stabilise our profit margin from the first quarter and to confirm our full-year targets for 2014. I want to thank all the employees at Orange for these results which are very encouraging for the future.”

      Orange (NYSE: FTE)

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