France's Iliad said its Iliad Italia subsidiary continued adding high numbers of customers in the third quarter of 2020 despite being weighted down by Covid-19 restrictions and increasingly aggressive targeted offers from rivals. The operator posted 580,000 net adds in the July to September period thanks in part to the Flash100 tariff it introduced toward the end of Q3 to end the quarter on 6.84 million subscribers, equivalent to almost 9 percent of the Italian market.
Revenues for the quarter climbed 56 percent year on year to EUR 171 million, outstripping the previous quarter’s EUR 162 million gain, helped by Italy coming out of strict lockdown but still impacted by the market’s lower churn rate since the first restrictions in late February. In the year to date revenues have soared 68.6 percent year on year to EUR 483 million, up from EUR 286 million in 2019.
The operator also continued to roll out its proprietary mobile network during the quarter, deploying some 770 new sites and reaching a total of nearly 4,780 active sites and 6,640 equipped sites at 30 September. The company was keen to point out by the end of October it had already met its year-end objective of having over 5,000 active sites by the end of 2020.
Looking ahead, Iliad Italia said it expected EBITDAaL losses to be lower in 2020 than in 2019 and to achieve EBITDAaL break-even with a market share of less than 10 percent. It also intends to roll out between 10,000 and 12,000 sites by the end of 2024 as well as generate revenues of EUR 1.5 billion in the long term.
