The France Telecom Group reported consolidated revenues of 22.144 billion euros for the first half of 2010, down 2.2% on a comparable basis. EBITDA was 7.745 billion euros for a margin of 35.0%, with the erosion limited to 0.9 points on a comparable basis. The company confirmed its ambition for organic cash-flow generation for 2010 and 2011.
Capital expenditure was 2.114 billion euros in the first half, for a CAPEX rate of 9.5% of revenues
organic cash flow of 3.989 billion euros in the first half of 2010.
Some highlights:
- A total year-on-year increase in the customer base of 3.8%, with 182 million customers at 30 June 2010
- There was a 6.6% growth in the mobile customer base to 123.1 million customers at 30 June 2010, driven by Africa and the Middle East with a combined total of 34.0 million customers at 30 June 2010, an increase of 18.4% year on year.
- There was a 2.2% growth in ADSL broadband subscribers (13.2 million customers) and rapid growth of digital TV with 3.6 million subscribers at 30 June 2010, a year-on-year increase of 34%
- In France, broadband ARPU grew by 4.6% to 36.6 euros per month. The company's Pay TV customer base reached 1,687,000 vs 1,619,000 at the end of March 2010. Orange Cinema Series + Orange Sport had about 752,000 subs.
- The company experienced stable first half 2010 revenues compared with the first half of 2009 excluding the effects of regulation, an improvement after the 0.9% downturn recorded in the second half of 2009:
- There was a very strong growth of 8.0% in Africa and the Middle East driven mainly by the 29% increase from new operations.
- Growth of operations in France (+0.3%, including +4.0% growth in mobile services), Spain (+2.5%, including +3.7% growth in mobile services), Poland (an improvement of 1.8 points to -3.4%, following -5.2% in the second half of 2009) and the other European countries (+0.9%), led by Belgium.
- France Telecom will propose a dividend of €1.40 per share for the fiscal years 2010, 2011 and 2012, subject to a vote in favour of these payments by shareholders at the relevant Annual General Meetings.
