Africa and the Middle East continue to be Orange Group’s bright spots as the majority of countries in those regions reported double-digit increases to maintain overall group sales.
In a statement, CEO Christel Heydemann said: “Africa and the Middle East continue to be our main growth driver, again delivering a remarkable performance, with most African countries producing double-digit growth thanks to new telecoms services that are off-setting the heightened competition for Orange Money.”
Africa and the Middle East contributed with year-on-year growth of 8.7% which equates to around €133 million, maintaining overall group revenues to the flat rate of 0.7% to €10.6 billion.
The company attributed the boost to “rapid growth” in its retail services (9.2%) due to demand for mobile data (23.2%), and fixed broadband (21.5%). As a result, the customer base for mobile and broadband grew by 27.7% and 23.5% respectively.
Orange noted the “robustness of these growth drivers “more than offset” decline it is seeing in Orange Money revenues which plunged 25.1% due to the increased competition mentioned.
Mobile financial services had nearly 1.8 million customers in Europe and 800,000 in Africa, Orange did not state the growth rate of these base numbers.
Another bright spot was its tower company Totem and enterprise segment both growing 12.2% and 0.8% respectively. The growth offset revenue declines seen in its home market France and Spain, both dropping 0.7% and 4.6% respectively.
Mobile services access lines grew 5.3% year-on-year to 231.8 million at the end of March 31 this year, including an 8% rise in contracts (88.3m).
Fixed services totalled 46.2 million access lines at the end of the same period which is a loss of 1.9%, broadband lines grew 19.6% to 12.8 million.
