News
French telco’s results show improvement in customer mix as well as overall numbers; market share exceeds 17%.
Iliad posted solid financial results for the first quarter of 2016, with growth in group revenues driven largely by its mobile business, particularly the 4G segment.
The French operator reported total turnover of €1.15 billion in the three months to the end of March, an increase of 6.6% on the same quarter a year ago.
The company’s mobile arm contributed €483.6 million to the top line, up by 10.4% year-on-year, and recorded net subscriber additions of 215,000.
Free Mobile ended the quarter with 11.9 million customers, including 4.25 million 4G subscribers, having added 550,000 4G users during the three months. As such, the firm puts its share of the overall French mobile market at in excess of 17%.
Mobile customer net additions fell short of Haitong Research’s estimates, where analysts had predicted a figure of 250,000, but mobile revenues exceeded the firm’s expectations.
"This improved revenue performance in mobile suggests a different type of growth in this segment, less anchored on customer growth volumes, but more on the quality of customer with improved ARPU trends, increased data consumption," Haitong said in a research note. "Ultimately this should also result in stronger profitability over the medium term."
The firm also noted that Iliad shares have thus far failed to recover significantly from the collapse of Orange’s planned takeover of Bouygues Telecom, which would likely have seen Free Mobile bulk up through the acquisition of assets, "but these figures should help investors feel reassured about the operating momentum of the group."
Iliad’s fixed-line business remains the biggest contributor to revenue, bringing in €664.6 million in Q1, but growth there is slower at 3.9%.
The operator recorded 78,000 broadband net adds to take its base to 6.22 million. It also extended its 325,000 connectible fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) footprint by 325,000 potential connections, giving it coverage of 2.8 million premises.
