Spain: Orange and Telefónica fall
October 29, 2020
From David Del Valle in Madrid
In the first nine months of the year, Orange Spain saw its revenues fall by 5 per cent to €3.7 billion with residential revenues even declining more with a cut of 6.5 per cent.
The ongoing pandemic, along with the tough commercial battle in the market and the entry of new low-cost companies, has brought down the revenues. In the third quarter the situation was slightly better with revenues down 3.5 per cent to €1.2 billion.
In terms of subscribers, Orange experienced a flat growth of 0.6 per cent to 716,000 customers versus September 2019. The company has over 20 million customers, 16 million to mobile services and 3.99 million in broadband. Out of the total broadband customers, 82 per cent are FTTH customers, 3.26 million. Orange already covers 15.2 million homes with FTTH, up 4.1 per cent versus last year.
Meanwhile, pain’s largest telco operator Telefónica saw its profit fall by 50.1 per cent to €671 million in the first nine months of the year, losing €165 million in the third quarter.
Total revenues amounted to €32.1 billion between January and September, down 10.7 per cent, with a fall of 2.5 per cent in the main markets: Spain, Germany, UK and Brazil. In the third quarter, though, revenues grew by 1.2 per cent to €10.4 billion. OIBDA dropped by 14.9 per cent in nine months to €9.7 billion.
In Spain, revenues slightly grew up to €3.1 billion in the third quarter versus the previous quarter with €3.07 billion, although overall in the nine months revenues fell by 3.7 per cent.
In terms of customers, pay-TV subscribers in Spain reached 4 million, slightly below than 4.08 million in September last year.
Meanwhile, in Germany, Telefónica has reached an agreement with Allianz Capital Partners to set up an independent platform 50/50 per cent to deploy FTTH in the country in rural areas with an investment of €5 billion.