Africa and the Middle East continued to boost revenues for Orange as the group claimed success in its 5-year plan to invest in “fundamentals” to achieve growth.
Orange CEO Christel Heydemann said in a statement: “The Africa and Middle East region has delivered excellent results, with a notable performance from Orange Money in the fourth quarter which succeeded in repositioning itself in a competitive market”.
“These results further confirm my confidence in the sense and relevance of our strategy for the years ahead. They clearly demonstrate the Group’s capacity to create value by concentrating on our fundamentals.”
Within its Africa and Middle East segment, Orange stated units collectively brought in €6.9 billion in revenues a 6.4% rise in its full 2022 financial year. The revenue rise was due to mobile data, fixed broadband and B2B demand.
Mobile customer base grew 6% to 143 million at the end of 2022, including 53 million 4G customers (up 19%). Orange Money’s customer base grew 16% to 29 million, meanwhile fixed broadband surged 24% to 2.8 million customers. Orange Money reported annual revenues of €461 million, returning to growth in Q4.
Africa and the Middle East was the “main contributor” to group revenues reaching €43.4 billion a slight 0.6% increase in its 2022 financial year, as well also a solid performance from its retail services and price increases across its European footprint. In Q4 alone revenues rose 1.3% to €11.3 billion.
Regarding customer base, mobile had 241.9 million which is an increase of 5.9% year-on-year, including 94 million post-paid contracts which itself saw an increase of 8.9% to the year.
Fixed services totalled 45.4 million, down 2.6%, and included 14.2 million high-speed broadband connections which grew 15.6%, while slower fixed narrowband services decreased.
Net income for the year totalled €2.6 billion bettering the €778 million recorded in 2021. This was due to a surge in operating income which was €4.8 billion compared to €2.5 billion.
Capex fell 0.7% across the group as part of targets to scale back due to the slowdown in the rollout of fibre in its Western markets. In Africa and the Middle East, however, capex rose by €191 million.