Bouygues returns to profit with new users

BOUYGUES Telecom said yesterday it had picked up 1 million new mobile phone customers last year, allowing the French telecom operator to return to profit.

Net profit came in at 83 million ($87.5 million), after a loss of 59 million in 2015.

The new mobile customers pushed its client base to 13 million at the end of December, it said.

“The positive commercial and financial results of Bouygues Telecom in 2016 confirm its strategic choices,” chairman Martin Bouygues said in a statement.

Exceptional items affected overall profits positively, as the 84 million Bouygues had to pay to share its network with fellow French operator SFR was outweighed by the 104 million capital gain it made from the sale of telecom masts to Spain’s Cellnex.

Some two thirds of Bouygues’ customers have adopted 4G technology with a monthly data use of 4.2 gigabytes per month on average, against 2.4 a year earlier, said the operator, France’s third-largest.

Orange, France’s leading mobile phone operator, also yesterday reported its net profit grew nearly 11 percent to 2.93 billion in 2016.

Profits were helped by a one-off gain of 4.5 billion euros from the sale of just over four percent in British operator EE.

It was the first year since 2008 that Orange managed a rise in both its sales and Ebitda, a key measure of operating performance, finance director Ramon Fernandez told reporters.

Sales in Orange’s home market France declined by 0.9 percent as income from roaming charges dropped.

But elsewhere in Europe, sales were up 5.8 percent, mostly thanks to operations in Spain where turnover rose by 17.9 percent.

Orange had 201.7 million mobile phone customers worldwide at the end of 2016, up 0.9 percent from the previous year mostly thanks to gains in France and the rest of Europe.