By Leo Marchandon and Noemie Naudin
(Reuters) -Orange is open to consolidation talks with French rival SFR, pending the completion of its debt restructuring, the chief executive of France’s biggest telecom provider said on Tuesday.
“I can confirm that, France being our first market, we are ready to engage and indeed, there are preliminary discussions between operators,” CEO Christel Heydemann said in a post-earnings call with analysts.
She did not specify if SFR, also one of France’s top operators, was one of the companies Orange was talking to.
“We do think there is a need for consolidation – it is true in France and it is true in Europe,” Heydemann said.
Orange reported a 3.8% rise in its half-year core earnings after leases (EBITDAaL), buoyed by a strong performance in the French market and continued double-digit percentage growth in Africa and the Middle East.
It also said it planned to finalise the signing of its Spanish fibre network joint venture within the previously announced time frame.
“This will be completed in terms of signing by the end of the summer, and then the closing will be before the end of the year,” finance chief Laurent Martinez told journalists.
MasOrange, owned by Orange and MasMovil, is set to hold 50% of the venture, while Vodafone Spain, owned by Zegona Communications, will hold 10%. The remaining 40% is yet to be assigned to an investor, with Martinez declining to comment on whether a partner had been identified.
Orange had 15.5 million fibre-to-the-home customers globally at the end of the reporting period, up from 15 million in the last quarter. Its number of mobile customers worldwide grew to 98.1 million from 95.7 million three months ago.
Its half-year EBITDAaL – a common earnings metric used by telecom firms – was 5.66 billion euros ($6.55 billion) and met analysts’ consensus in the first half of 2025.
The company also nudged up its full-year EBITDAaL target to more than 3% growth, from around 3% previously.
($1 = 0.8635 euros)
(Reporting by Leo Marchandon and Noémie Naudin in Gdansk. Editing by Milla Nissi-Prussak.)
