Everything Everywhere, which runs the Orange and T-Mobile UK networks, has released outline results for the first quarter of 2011. It says mobile service revenue was up 1.6% year-on-year, although overall turnover was down 1.7%. (Both figures exclude the effects of regulation).
160,000 new contract customers were added in the quarter; contract customers now account for 45% of the total base, compared with 41% in Q1 2010. 84% of contract customers are now buying smartphones, up from 62% a year ago. Overall, churn is down from 1.5% in Q1 2010 to 1.3% in Q1 2011. Orange and T-Mobile now have 27.7 million customers between them.
Tom Alexander, Chief Executive Officer of Everything Everywhere, said “Since announcing our strategy just six months ago, we are progressing well and have significant momentum, specifically through our creation of the UK’s first supernetwork. We are also ahead of plan to deliver an NPV of £3.5 billion worth of synergies following our merger. We remain fully confident of achieving our commercial and financial ambitions. We are fully confident of achieving our stated ambition of 25%+ EBITDA margin for 2014, in spite of the ongoing challenging economic, regulatory and market conditions. For the remainder of the year we will continue to focus on improving the lifetime value of both our prepay and postpay customers through innovative propositions; as the industry and market dynamics evolve, our customer marketing will be increasingly characterised by retention and improving customer loyalty.”