Growth in revenues and slight increase in EBITDAaL
The Group confirms its financial objectives for 2022
▪ Revenues for the third quarter 2022 rose 1.0%1 year on year, driven by:
– Europe, which performed well (+3.2%) with Spain returning to growth
– Africa & Middle East, which grew 4.2% and remains on course to meet its annual growth target of around 6%
– Enterprise IT & Integration Services, which accelerated (+6.8%) and offset the decline in legacy activities, resulting in stable revenues
– Retail services in France (+2.6% excluding PSTN), for which total revenues dipped by 1% year on year but increased compared with 2Q in the absence of any significant underlying effect related to co-financing
– Totem (+14.2%), whose third-party customers now account for 18% of hosting service revenues (versus 15% in 3Q 2021)
The acceleration in revenues (+1.0% after +0.7% in 1Q and -0.4% in 2Q) was due in particular to higher equipment sales and the reduced impact from falling rates for call terminations, which are low- or zero-margin activities.
▪ EBITDAaL rose 0.2% year on year in the third quarter of 2022.
In line with our year-end targets, EBITDAaL growth is expected to accelerate in the fourth quarter thanks to the reversal of underlying effects (employee shareholding program, Orange Money).
▪ eCAPEX rose 5.2% in the third quarter of 2022. Over the first nine months of the year, it fell by 4.4% to 5,143 million euros.
Despite the very challenging macroeconomic and geopolitical climate, the Group confirms its financial objectives for 2022, a milestone towards the achievement of its 2023 commitments.
Orange also confirms payment on 7 December 2022 of an interim cash dividend for 2022 of 0.30 euros per share. A dividend of 0.70 euros per share for the 2022 fiscal year will be proposed to the 2023 Shareholders’ Meeting.
Commenting on the publication of these results, Christel Heydemann, Chief Executive Officer of the Orange group, said:“In an inflation-dominated macroeconomic environment, Orange has again delivered resilient results and demonstrated the complementary nature of its different markets. The Group’s third quarter revenues grew by 1% largely thanks to the contribution of its European countries and Africa.
EBITDAaL also grew slightly rising 0.2% thanks in particular to Scale Up, our program of net savings on indirect costs, which continues to deliver to plan.
The quarter was notable for the excellent commercial performance in France, and also for a continued increase in customer satisfaction. The growth in revenues across our European footprint accelerated to +3.2%, driven by retail services that were 1.9% higher year on year. This solid momentum was a feature of all our countries in the region, including in Spain where our process of simplification, the stabilization of the client base and the launch of enriched service offers for high end customers
enabled us to reverse the negative trend of the last years and return to growth for the first time since the first quarter of 2019.
Momentum in the Africa region once again proved solid and resilient with continued growth, rising 4.2% despite the geopolitical context which weighed on West Africa.
In the Enterprise segment pressure on margins remained intense and we are concentrating our efforts here on the transformation of our business models.
We are confident of accelerated EBITDAaL in the fourth quarter thanks to the reversal of underlying effects and a commercial performance that should remain robust during end of year holiday period.
I am fully focused, along with all our teams, on achieving our 2022 objectives and on the preparation of our strategic route map for the Group. We are facing an exceptional economic context which requires us to make the appropriate choices in the coming months. Looking ahead, we shall present our strategic plan for the period to 2030 on 16 February 2023 following the publication of our 2022 results.”
