Orange Group saw Q3 revenue drop by 4 per cent, to €10.16 billion, as competitive pressures continued to take their toll.

The top line performance would have been worse had not the weight of regulation lightened compared with previous quarters. Regulatory price cuts swiped €173 million from sales during Q3 (compared with a much heftier €511 million in the first half).

Excluding the impact of regulation, Q3 group sales were down a more modest 2.6 per cent.

Orange does not report net income on a quarterly basis but posted EBITDA of €3.34 billion, a 7.7 per cent decline compared with the same period last year.

The group saw a 2.1 per cent increase in customers compared to a year earlier, with a total of 232.5 million.

In terms of mobile contract net additions, Orange had its best quarterly performance in France for three years, notching up an extra 298,000. It still wasn’t enough, however, to stop home-market revenue falling by 5.6 per cent, to €4.98 billion.

Spain and Poland both reported net additions of 179,000. While Spain saw a 1.2 per cent increase in revenue, fuelled by the customer growth and mobile handset sales, revenue in Poland declined by 7.9 per cent.

The group’s Africa and Middle East operations saw a 6.8 per cent growth to reach 84.6 million customers, led by Mali, Guinea and the Ivory Coast. This translated to a 4.1 per cent increase in revenue for the region.

Orange saw a 7.2 per cent fall in revenue in its enterprise business due to price reductions associated with contract renewals and the economic situation across Europe.

The group cut direct costs by 5.3 per cent year-on-year and indirect costs by 1.4 per cent. Of the €176 million of savings in Q3, €120 million came from France.

Capital expenditure increased by 2.6 per cent to €3.75 billion over the nine months ended September, €400m of which was spent on 4G and high-speed broadband in France. Capex was 12.2 per cent of revenue over the period.

Orange chairman and CEO Stéphane Richard pointed to three key elements from the third quarter: the group’s ability to expand its customer base in key market while managing the overall decline in prices; a continued reduction in its cost base; and investments in the crucial growth sectors of 4G and fibre.

“Overall, these results, which are the fruit of the efforts of all of the Group’s employees, give us confidence that we will achieve our 2013 objectives and reinforce our ambitions for 2014,” he added.

For 2013 as a whole, Orange set a target for operating cash flow of at least €7 billion. It confirmed it will pay a dividend of €0.80 per share for the current financial year.

The company said it will follow a policy of “prudent and selective acquisitions, concentrating on possible consolidation and disposals in the markets in which it operates”.