New football season boost for Orange’s Spanish TV numbers

The launch of the new football season pushed Orange’s TV numbers in Spain into positive territory in the third quarter, with the operator adding 47,000 new TV subscribers compared with a loss of 41,000 in the second quarter.

The operator also added 79,000 broadband customers, as compared with 71,000 for the previous quarter, along with 12,000 net mobile contract additions.

Orange’s base now has 17% TV penetration, compared with 77% fibre penetration

Orange saw its revenues in Spain decline by 2.5% to €1.31 billion as price competition continued to take its toll on the market. The company said that it had adopted a value-based strategy involving a price rise in July that resulted in a 2% jump in churn, but also fuelled growth in average revenue of 0.7% to €57.9.

Orange did not break out TV numbers for France in its summary, but said that its fixed broadband business had added 65,000 net new cuystomers, with fibre customers up 178,000, a record.

The company had 14.6 million connectable fibre homes and a total of 3.1 million fibre customers at the end of the quarter.

Orange’s French convergent based increased by 2.9% to 5.8 million at the end of the period.

Orange’s overall revenues grew 0.8% in the quarter on a comparable basis, driven by growth in the Middle East and Africa region, up 7.6%, with non-French European revenues also up by a solid 1.4%, driven in part by sales of convergent products.

The weak markets for the company this quarter were France, which delivered a revenue dip of 0.4%, as well as Spain, where the evolution of the market towards low-cost offerings has been blamed by the company for its lacklustre performance.

CEO Stéphane Richard said that “while competitive pressures are on the increase in Spain, in France they have somewhat abated and revenue would have increased had it not been for the impact of [Orange’s] ePresse and audiobook offers.

Richard hailed the strength of growth of fibre in France and said that “the launch of the Livebox 5 at the beginning of October should also maintain this momentum”.

Overall Orange revenues for the quarter stood at €10.6 billion.