Orange Belgium reported second-quarter revenues up 1.9 percent to EUR 319 million, as 9.6 percent growth in retail services offset lower MVNO revenues. EBITDA jumped 18.2 percent year-on-year to EUR 79 million, helped by cost control and improvements in its growing cable business. The company maintained its outlook for the full year, for a small increase in revenue and flat to slightly higher EBITDA.
Orange said its cable business moved to positive EBITDA in the first of half of 2019, at EUR 1.3 million thanks to continuous efforts on operational efficiency. The cable operating cash flow remained negative at EUR 22 million, after capex of EUR 23.3 million.
Total revenues from convergent services increased 70 percent to EUR 41 million, helping offset flat mobile service revenues in Q2. The operator added another 16,000 customers for its convergent ‘Love’ offer in Q2, for a total of 216,000 at the end of June. Consumer ARPU for the service was up 4.1 percent year-on-year to EUR 76.8, due to reduced discounts and more customers taking the fixed line option.
Another 22,000 mobile customers were added under the convergent offer, for a total of 294,000 or 13.6 percent of Orange’s total postpaid base. The total postpaid customer base grew by 26,000 in Q2 to 2.516 million at the end of June. Orange noted that the growth came despite the loss of about 7,200 Sims from a B2B customer. Postpaid mobile ARPO decreased by 3.2 percent to EUR 20.6 due to a continued drop in out-of-bundle revenues.
The prepaid mobile base was down 3.2 percent year-on-year to 557,000 in June. M2M Sims rose by 21.8 percent in the 12 months to 1.238 million.
