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French operator added 1.6 million mobile customers in 2015, giving it close to 17% of the market, revenues grew by 5.9%.
Iliad on Thursday revealed that aims to capture a quarter of the French fixed broadband and mobile markets "in the long term", simultaneously posting a solid set of financial results for full-year 2015.
The telco, which stands to gain scale as a result of the proposed tie up between Orange and Bouygues Telecom via the acquisition of divested assets, has established itself as a credible competitor in the French telecoms space in the four years since it launched its disruptive mobile offer into the market.
Last year the group generated revenues of €4.41 billion, an increase of 5.9% on the previous year, with the bulk of the growth coming from its mobile business, where turnover increased by 13.3% to €1.83 billion.
EBITDA grew by 16.1% year-on-year to €1.49 billion. The firm’s EBITDA margin increased by three percentage points to 33.8%, "mainly due to the performance of the mobile business," Iliad said in its results statement.
The telco’s Free Mobile unit recorded 1.6 million net customer additions in 2015, taking its total base to 11.69 million and giving it a market share of almost 17%, it claims.
Iliad intends to deploy more than 1,500 new mobile sites this year and increase its 4G coverage to close to 75% of the French population by the end of 2016. It aims to "achieve a 35% mobile market share in the long term," the company said.
Its long-term target for the fixed broadband and ultrafast broadband sector is the same.
It had 6.14 million broadband customers at the end of last year, having added 270,000 new customers over the 12 months. It did not divulge its market share, but claims to have taken 29% of net additions in 2015.
