Orange on Thursday raised its full-year earnings guidance after returning to positive revenue growth in the third quarter.
In the three months to 30 September, the French incumbent generated revenue of €10.28 billion, up 0.5% year-on-year. By comparison, Orange’s group revenue fell by 0.2% in the second quarter, and by 0.9% in the first.
Restated EBITDA came in at €3.56 billion, up from €3.52 billion in Q3 2014.
The improvement was driven by slowing declines at its domestic and European businesses, and continued strong growth in Africa and the Middle East (see table). Enterprise revenues came in at €1.58 billion, edging up 0.5% year-on-year.
"Our return to growth in revenue and restated EBITDA validates our strategy of differentiation through quality and investment and confirms the positive momentum generated over almost two years," said Orange CEO Stéphane Richard, in a statement.
The telco also recorded solid net customer additions on the mobile side of the business.
In France, Orange added 234,000 postpaid customers, bringing its total to 23.7 million, or around 84% of its overall mobile subscriber base. 4G customers grew by 1 million during the quarter to reach 6.6 million at the end of September.
In the rest of Europe, Orange saw its mobile base grow to 50.1 million from 48.4 million 12 months ago. Meanwhile, in Africa and the Middle East, mobile subscr ibers increased to 111.2 million from 94.3 million.
The telco ended September with 201.7 million mobile customers, compared to 182 million at the end of September 2014.
Orange’s fixed broadband customer base grew to 17.9 million from 15.8 million a year earlier. The performance was driven by France and Spain, which recorded net additions of 116,000 and 142,000 respectively in Q3.
"We have now exceeded 263 million customers worldwide…In France and the rest of Europe, we have 15 million 4G customers and 17 million in fixed broadband, of which 1.5 million use fibre," said Richard.
The strong performance prompted Orange to raise its full-year EBITDA guidance to at least €12.3 billion, compared to its earlier outlook of €11.9 billion-€12.1 billion.
"Propelled by this momentum and driven by our ambition to deliver an unrivalled customer experience, we now aim to achieve the high end of the range for the objectives initially set for 2015," Richard said.
