Altice, the Luxembourg-based telco, has reported a 3.3 per cent drop in pro forma revenues for its first quarter to March 31st, to €3.26 billion. Although turnover from international operations rose 4.9 per cent to €527 million, sales at Altice’s core French business Numericable-SFR dropped 4.7 per cent to €2.74 billion. The French unit is losing mobile subscribers to its rivals, with net losses of 422,000 users in the first quarter, though a cost-cutting exercise, which was launched in the wake of last year’s merger of Numericable and SFR, saw EBITDA rise 21 per cent in France to €930 million. EBITDA for the international operations – covering Belgium, Luxembourg, Portugal, Israel, the Dominican Republic and a number of French Overseas Territories (FOT) – climbed 16 per cent to €254 million.

In operational terms, the group claimed 20.95 million subscribers across all its operations, with 15.82 million in France, 3.70 million in the Dominican Republic, 1.06 million in Israel and 371,000 in the FOT markets. Meanwhile, Altice’s cable TV businesses served 3.14 million users at the end of March, including 1.60 million at Numericable-SFR; 2.37 million were taking cable broadband services, an increase of 65,000 in the first three months of the year. The French unit also has 4.93 million non-cable Internet subscribers using xDSL and other technologies.

Dexter Goei, Chief Executive Officer of Altice, commented: “We are particularly pleased with the strong start to the synergies realisation plan in France and are confident that our strategy based on higher value generation through focus on quadruple play and use of our clear fibre advantage will continue to deliver results. We began the year strongly, both operationally and financially, and will continue to drive margin expansion and cash flow growth across all of our operations in 2015.”