Mobile telephony operator Orange Romania concluded the first quarter with more than 50% growth in both revenues and customers. Orange had 3,611 million customers on March 31, 2004, 52% more than in the corresponding period of last year. Total revenues for the quarter were worth $161 million, which makes for a 53.6% increase from the same time in 2003.
Orange Romania stood out as the fastest growing Orange subsidiary in the first three months of 2004.
The operator had 2,377 million customers on March 31, 2003 and 3.3 million at the end of last year. Orange Romania therefore gained 311,000 new customers in the first quarter.
Orange Romania had logged $105 million revenues for the first three months of 2003. Total revenues for the entire 2003 amounted to $527 million and were 42% higher than the year before.
"Orange Romania focuses on every aspect of communication, which showed in the innovative products and services provided to our clients. We cut prices on international calls, kept developing the Orange Thank You programme so as to allow our loyal customers as much freedom in using the included benefits as possible, we concluded an agreement with Equant Romania to meet the expectations of high-quality services provided to large companies," Bernard Moscheni, Orange Romania CEO said, commenting on the financial results.
Orange's worldwide revenues were up 12.1% compared with the same time last year, while the customer base was 11.5% larger, reaching a total of more than 50 million customers.
Only the operations in Egypt and Slovakia (besides Romania) witnessed over 20% growth of customer base, the parent company report shows.
The increase in the customer base in Egypt was 29.3%, while the number of Orange users in Slovakia rose by 20.5%.
Also in Q1, Orange bought the stake of Japan-based Tomen in its Romanian branch and increased interest to 73% from 67.8% at the end of 2003.
iuliana.cerchez@zf.ro
