Orange said strong growth in Africa and the Middle East offset declines in France and allowed the telecommunications provider to slightly raise its outlook for the year.
Sales in the region grew 13% to €2.1-billion when adjusted for currency fluctuations in the second quarter compared to the previous period, the phone service provider said in a statement on Tuesday. That was just over the average analyst estimate of €2.05-billion.
The company has been relying on faster growth in Africa and the Middle East, where the telecoms market is less saturated, to buoy earnings for the past several quarters. The company said that growth will boost the overall company’s outlook for earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation after leases to above 3% this year. It was about 3% before.
Overall revenue was flat at €9.9-billion, as France, which represents more than 40% of Orange’s business, saw sales fall 3.1% to €4.3-billion for the quarter. A stronger-than-expected performance in mobile was offset by a 9.3% decline in wholesale revenues in the country.
CEO Christel Heydemann had resisted cutting prices in France, the company’s largest market, but stagnant sales pressured the company to discount bundles of mobile and “fixed” services last year. Heydemann is among the European telecoms executives who have called for more consolidation in the sector to gain the scale they say is needed to invest in high-tech mobile networks and improve returns.
European regulators have been receptive to the idea of consolidation in the face of the industry’s struggles. However, no company has tested how the new European Commission will act when faced with a merger that could reduce the number of operators in a country.
Consolidation
All eyes are on France, where billionaire Patrick Drahi is selling struggling telecoms company SFR. Orange and the two other operators in the market — Bouygues Telecom and Free — are in talks to divvy up the company. If successful, the sale would reduce the number of large telecoms operators in France to three, something many telecoms companies have put forward as a healthy number of competitors for European markets.
Still, regulators could limit how much of SFR that Orange can buy because it’s already the largest operator in the country.
Read: OpenAI, Meta and Orange to collaborate on AI models for African languages
“There are obviously some preliminary conversations between operators,” chief financial officer Laurent Martinez said on a call with reporters. “France is our first market and we are definitely willing to engage and are actively following the situation.” — Jillian Deutsch, (c) 2025 Bloomberg LP
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