French telecommunications firm Orange Group has emphasised strong performance within Africa and Middle East market, with growth up 7.6%, according to the company's financial results at 30 September 2019.

Orange Group revenues increased by 0.8% year-on-year on a comparable basis in the third quarter of 2019, while Group EBITDAaL rose 0.2% on a comparable basis over the quarter, and 0.6% over nine months, and eCAPEX grew 4.0%on a comparable basis over the first nine months of the year.

The company specified growth in 4G deployment within MEA "with a total of over 22 million customers secured by the end of the 3rd quarter, a 49% increase year-on-year."

Strong regional performance helped the company record a 1.0% increase in revenue from its mobile only services (€2.7-billion) and achieve a 4.2% increase in overall mobile customer base to reach 209.4 million.

"Group EBITDAaL rose to€3.6 billion in the third quarter, up 0.2%; over the first nine months of the year, EBITDAaL grew 0.6%. EBITDAaL from telecom activities was 3.6 billion euros in the third quarter, up 0.4%; over the first nine months of the year, this indicator rose 0.8%," the company stated.

According to the telco, the active Orange Money customer base (16.6million) grew 22% year-on-year, with revenues up 29%.

Stéphane Richard, Chairman and CEO of the Orange Group, said: "The Group has confirmed its growth momentum during this third quarter, with revenues up 0.8% and EBITDAaL improving 0.2% thanks to our excellent performance in Africa (and) Middle East and the resilience of the enterprise market."

Orange has 65.3-million 4G customers, 22 million of whom are in MEA, Richard added.

"The countries of Africa & Middle East have a combined 124.3 million mobile customers, a 5.1% increase year-on-year. The increase in revenues was also supported by the momentum of fixed services (up 11.9% in the third quarter) and, notably, by broadband services which now have 1.14 million customers. Wholesale revenues were down 5.5% in the third quarter (compared with a 7.5% decline in the second quarter), primarily taking into account the decline in the volume of direct incoming international traffic," the company stated further.

Orange added that the growth was driven by all countries in the region (with the exception of Niger) with eight of the countries delivering double-digit growth (versus four countries the previous quarter).

All the countries contributed to the revenue growth, including Sonatel group which increased 6.9% and Orange Côte d'Ivoire group up 7.5% in the third quarter.

Digital centres

Orange made headlines this week after confirming the opening of its second digital centre in Africa in Dakar, Senegal.

Other centres are expected to open by the end of the year in Jordan, Cameroon and Côte d'Ivoire, as well as in Morocco and Egypt in 2020.