French operator Iliad reported first half revenues up 7.3 percent year-on-year to EUR 2.464 billion. Mobile revenues grew 10.5 percent to EUR 1.075 billion, thanks to more customers and an improved mix, and fixed revenues were up 4.8 percent to EUR 1.394 billion, helped by new bundles launched with Canal Plus.
The group's EBITDA increased 8.2 percent to EUR 874.6 million, led by improved profitability in mobile due to more customers on-net and an improved subscriber mix. This was offset by negative factors in fixed, such as an increase in regulated unbundling prices, costs for the Canal Plus deal and costs for the accelerated FTTH roll-out. Net profit was still up 22.1 percent to EUR 232.6 million.
Iliad, which operates under the brand Free, added a net 200,000 mobile subscribers in the second quarter, compared to 240,000 in Q1, to finish the period with a total 13.14 million. The company said all new customers in the period took its top EUR 20 plan, helping improve the customer mix. Over half of customers were using 4G services, helping push average data usage to 6.6 GB per month from 3.9 GB a year ago.
In the fixed market, subscriber additions slowed to 83,000 in the first half, hurt by fierce competition and numerous promotions in the market, Free said. Total broadband customers reached 6.468 million with ARPU of EUR 34.0, up from 33.9 year ago.
Capital expenditure at the group totaled EUR 723 million in the six months, halfway to the target EUR 1.4-1.5 billion for the year. The operator added another 900,000 new connectible sockets to its FTTH network, bringing the total to 5.3 million at the end of June. Around 110,000 subscribers were connected to fiber during the period, equal to as many as the whole of 2016. This increased the FTTH customer base by 35 percent in six months to almost 420,000. Iliad also increased its mobile network coverage to almost 91 percent of the French population for 3G and 82 percent for 4G.
Iliad said it also spent another EUR 58 million in the period preparing for its launch in Italy. This included the first EUR 50 million towards buying spectrum from Wind and a start to rolling out its mobile core network.
