Today’s earnings from France Telecom (NYSE: FTE) were a signal that the operator wants to look ahead and put the last year behind it.
The telco said 2009 revenue was down by 1.8 percent to €45.8 billion (£40.4 billion; $61.8 billion), and net income also decreased by 6.4 percent to €4.85 billion (£4.3 billion; $6.5 billion). Still, these numbers beat analyst expectations: those polled by Bloomberg had expected profits of €4.6 billion.
In another forward-looking gesture, France Telecom stripped out of earnings the results of Orange UK, ahead of its merger with the operator and T-Mobile UK. This deal has yet to get final approval from regulators, but France Tel is already viewing Orange UK as a “discontinued” operation and seems to view the antitrust process as more of a formality than a potential hurdle. With the UK included, revenue for the year would be €50.95 billion.
—Broadband and fibre: Total broadband customers for the group are now at 13.5 million, an increase of 4.1 percent over last year. The operator has reiterated its plans to deploy a fibre-to-the-home network in France, with pricing for the service to be made public in the middle of this year. The company is investing €2 billion in this project and aims to have the whole country, plus three overseas districts, covered by 2015.
—IPTV still growing: France Telecom says it now has 3.2 million IPTV customers, making it the biggest IPTV provider in Europe. It currently only offers IPTV services in France and Poland. In France, where it has 2.8 million IPTV subscribers—representing a 45 percent growth over the year before—it has 1.1 million people taking premium pay-TV packages including 663,000 taking Orange Sport and its Cinema Series channels.
—The mobile subscriber base is now at 132.6 million users, a growth of 8.8 percent. Mobile broadband subscribers (those using dongles) shot up by 20.2 percent. Newer mobile ventures are proving to be revenue drivers for the company right now: in the UK, the company says revenues (which were €5.1 billion) were boosted by 3.7 percent, partly due to MVNO deals; and emerging markets, where Orange offers mobile services, revenues of €3.4 billion were up by 5.2 percent.