PARIS: Orange France posted revenue of EUR 4.83 billion in the fourth quarter of 2016, down 0.8 percent year-on-year compared to a fall of 0.6 percent in the previous quarter. Mobile service revenue dropped by 4.6 percent (-3.8% in Q3), hurt by lower roaming revenue from its deal with Free and the ongoing impact of European roaming price reductions, while equipment revenue remained in positive territory (+4.7%) but grew slower than the previous quarter (+11.4%). Conversely, there was an improvement in fixed services revenue growth, which progressed to 1.4 percent (+0.7% in Q3) as a result of stronger wholesale revenue.
Orange France’s contract customer base increased by 131,000 since September (when excluding M2M), lower than the growth experienced in the previous two quarters (187,000 in Q3 and 153,000 in Q2). Contract net additions included 63,000 under the Orange brand and 68,000 achieved by low-cost brand Sosh. Overall contract connections reached 20.78 million at end-December (when excluding 5.71 million M2M SIMs), representing a year-on-year growth of 2.5 percent. Out of this customer base, 11.3 million subscribed to LTE services. The ongoing shift towards SIM-only offers continued, as their share of the post-paid residential customer base increased to 65 percent (up 13 percentage points year-on-year).
Looking at fixed services, a 5.2 percent rise in wholesale revenue (+2.1% in Q3) more than offset a 0.9 percent fall in retail revenue (-0.1% in Q3). Fixed retail broadband customers increased by 95,000 since September (133,000 in Q3), to reach 11.15 million. The upward trend in FTTH net additions continued (144,000 from 127,000 in Q3), bringing the overall FTTH customer base to 1.45 million, supported by the ongoing fibre deployment.
The company reported that capital expenditure increased by 10.5 percent year-on-year in 2016, representing 18.0 percent of revenue (+1.9 points from 2015). This rise was mainly driven by higher investment in FTTH and LTE technologies. The FTTH footprint continued to expand, reaching 6.88 million premises in December compared with 5.06 million a year earlier, while LTE coverage improved to 88 percent of the population, from 80 percent at the end of 2015.
