Orange: 326m-euro business in Q3

Orange Romania, Romania’s largest mobile telephone operator, has registered sales worth 326 million euros in the first quarter of this year, up 24.1% on last year, amid a significant increase in clients. Three quarters into the year, Orange derived revenues worth 904 million euros, and expects to exceed 1.2 billion euros by yearend. The operator increased its number of clients by 738,000 in Q3, whilst the overall number of clients (active SIM cards) climbed 24.2% to 9.31 million, against the same period in 2006. The increase is significantly higher than Orange’s initial target of 8.7 million clients, which was upped to 9.2 million in June. “An increase of 700,000 clients is the highest increase registered in one quarter for Orange Romania during 10 years on the market. I expect results to work out well in the fourth quarter as well, and I estimate we will close this year with revenues worth 1.2 billion euros,” said Richard Moat, CEO of Orange Romania. The average revenue per user (calculated for the last 12 months) stood at 133 euros in Q3, down 3 euros against Q2, and 4 euros against Q1. This year, Orange added almost 1.3 million new clients to its client base. The number of clients for mobile data services (through the EDGE and 3G technologies) rose by 23,000, to 504,000, in Q3, whilst the share of non-voice services accounted for 8.4% of the operator’s revenues.