Citing growth in retail services and fueled in particular by repricing in Europe and by the growth driver Africa and Middle East, Orange Group reported Q1 revenue of 10.619 billion euros, up 1.3% compared to a year earlier.
Africa & Middle East was the main contributor to this growth with a sharp 9.1% increase in revenues (+141 million euros), followed by Europe with 3.8% growth (+102 million euros), driven by Poland (+7.1%) and Spain, which has confirmed its return to growth (+2.8%) for the third consecutive quarter.
Revenues in France were 1.8% lower (-78 million euros) as a result of the downward trend in wholesale.
The slight 0.7% decrease in Enterprise revenues (-14 million euros) continued to be driven by the sharp decline in fixed voice revenues (-11.6%), partially offset by growth in IT & Integration services revenues (+5.3%).
Additional highlights
- Mobile services had 243.4 million accesses (+5.0%), including 95.8 million contracts (+8.5%).
- Fixed services totaled 45.0 million accesses (down 2.7%), including 14.7 million very high-speed broadband accesses, that continued to grow strongly (+14.7%).
- Fixed narrowband accesses continued to decline (-14.2%).
- The number of households connectable to FTTH reached 66.6 million (+13.8%) and the FTTH customer base increased to 14.2 million (+15.1%).
Christel Heydemann, Chief Executive Officer of the Orange group, said: “The continued increase in revenues and EBITDAaL, as well as the decrease in eCapex compared to Q1 2022, are in line with our objectives for 2023 and reinforce our ambition for the years to come. We have started to execute our "Lead the Future" strategic plan with an even more value-oriented commercial strategy thanks to the quality of our networks and services which, combined with our cost controls, allow us to partially offset inflation. Our performance is once again driven by the remarkable growth in Africa and the Middle East and our strong value-driven growth in Europe. This quarter our retail services returned to growth in Spain, a country that has now seen growth for three consecutive quarters, and we’ve had double-digit revenue growth in our Orange Money business in Africa. Both demonstrate the strength of the Group and our ability to respond to increased competitive pressure. In France, retail services continue to grow and this should further accelerate in the second half of the year due to the recent price increases. Finally, in the Enterprise segment, we are executing our transformation plan.”
