RTTNews | Oct 29, 2020 03:04AM EDT

03:04 Thursday, October 29, 2020 (RTTNews.com) - French telecommunications operator Orange Group (ORAN) said Thursday that it returned to revenue growth in the third quarter despite the impact of the COVID-19 crisis.

For the third quarter, Group EBITDAaL was 3.58 billion euros, down 0.4 percent on a comparable basis from the prior year and also down 0.8 percent on a historical basis.

Group EBITDAaL was adversely impacted primarily by the decline in roaming and costs directly relating to the health crisis of 109 million euros and 41 million euros respectively.

However, third-quarter Group revenues were 10.58 billion euros, up 0.8 percent on a comparable basis and also up 0.1 percent on a historical basis. The company noted that the growth was driven by the momentum in services, in particular wholesale services due to the co-financing of the fiber network in France and convergent services which rose 5.7 percent and 1.5 percent respectively.

Orange had 10.9 million convergent customers across the Group at 30 September 2020, up 2.1 percent year on year, supported by continued strong growth in Europe.

Mobile services had 211.9 million customers at 30 September 2020, up 2.5 percent year on year, including 76.2 million contract customers representing an increase of 4.0 percent.

For fiscal 2020, Orange Group affirmed its outlook for a slight decline in EBITDAaL of around 1 percent, including all the effects related to the Covid-19 epidemic.

Orange said it has proposed return to a dividend of 0.70 euros per share for 2020. The company will pay an interim dividend of 0.40 euros per share in December, revised upwards by 0.10 euros.

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