Orange said its third-quarter return to growth “validates its strategy of differentiation through quality and investment,” with revenue increasing by a slim 0.5 per cent after declines earlier in 2015.

The company said that its trend of revenue improvement reflects a “favourable change in mobile services across all regions”, with a 1.2 per cent increase from this activity again following shrinkage earlier in the year.

“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 of objectives initially set for 2015,” Stephane Richard, chairman and CEO, noted.

For the full year, it is targeting restated EBITDA of “at least €12.3 billion”, taking into account the consolidation of Jazztel in Spain and Meditel in Morocco, and the disposal of Orange Armenia.

It previously guided for restated EBITDA between €11.9 billion and €12.1 billion.

It ended the period with 263.34 million customers, of which 201.68 million were mobile subscribers (up from 240.81 million and 182.02 million respectively). Its total numbers were bolstered through the acquisitions of Jazztel and Meditel.

France
The company said that its Q3 mobile performance in its home market of France was “very satisfactory with 234,000 net contract editions”. However, mobile service revenue decreased by 0.9 per cent to €1.91 billion, with Orange noting that this was an improvement from a 2.7 per cent drop in Q2 and 4.8 per cent in Q1.

At 30 September it had 6.6 million 4G customers in France, with 1 million net additions over the quarter.

Spain
Likewise, the company added 1 million 4G customers in Q3 in Spain, taking its total to 4.5 million. In this market, “fibre grew rapidly”, as Orange looked to migrate customers to the Jazztel network.

Mobile service revenue in this market declined by 2.7 per cent to €631 million, which again was an improvement from Q2 (6.6 per cent drop) and Q1 (down 9.6 per cent).

Other 4G totals were 1.6 million in Poland, 800,000 in Belgium and Luxemburg, 750,000 in Romania and 450,000 in Slovakia.

Some 111.2 million of Orange’s mobile customers are in its Africa and Middle East region. Mobile service revenue in this region grew by 8.2 per cent on a comparable basis to €1.06 billion, led by Cote d’Ivoire, Egypt, Mali, DRC and Guinea.

The company, which does not provide full financials for its Q3 period, said that on a group level restated EBITDA for the three months was €3.56 billion, up 1.1 per cent on a comparable basis, on revenue of €10.28 billion, up 0.5 per cent.