Hello to all of you. Welcome to Orange Q3 2026 results presentation. For your information, this conference is being recorded. The call today will be hosted by Christel Heydemann, our CEO, and Laurent Martinez, our CFO, with other members of Orange Executive Committee for the Q&A session that will start just after the presentation. Thank you. Now let me over the floor to Christel Heydemann. Christel, the floor is yours.
Good morning and thank you for joining our Q3 results presentation. Q3 confirms the group's strong momentum with revenue growth at 3.6%, EBITDA increasing by 4.6%, and a double-digit growth of operating cash flow at 10.3%. Revenue grew across all geographies, with Africa, Middle East continuing its double-digit trend. Solid commercial performance underpin retail services increase at 3.3%. Based on these solid results, we are upgrading our EBITDA full-year guidance with a growth now expected above 4.5%. A last word on our joint bid to acquire SFR alongside Bouygues and Iliad, Orange remains committed to constructive social dialogue, which is ongoing. Expected closing date in the second half of 2027 remain unchanged, subject to regulatory approvals. Driving into our financials, revenues are up 3.6% this quarter, reaching EUR 12.2 billion and growing across all geographies.
This strong performance was driven by retail services and an outstanding mid-teen growth in Middle East and Africa. EBITDA increased by 4.6%, driven by top-line growth and continued focus on efficiencies. We also maintain disciplined investment with eCAPEX to sales decreasing in the quarter and well in line with our full-year guidance of around 15%, driving operating cash flow up double digit at 10%. Let's now look at key actions in illustrating execution of our Trust the future plan in Q3. First, last week we signed together with Deutsche Telekom, Telefónica, and Vodafone, a letter of intent to prepare a potential joint bid for the future allocation of spectrum for mobile satellite services in Europe. The initiative supports the European Commission's ambition to strengthen Europe's sovereignty, security, and resilience in critical connectivity infrastructure.
Overall, we see satellite connectivity as a core complement to our networks to provide coverage, completeness, and resilience. Also in terms of innovative growth, Orange Business obtained a new SecNumCloud qualification, extending its portfolio of trusted cloud offers. Orange Business was also selected to provide the European Union's backbone network for trusted data exchange. Our super app Max it in Middle East Africa keeps gaining traction with 38.5 million active users, a 1.8 times year-on-year increase. We also conducted a 50G-PON test in Belgium, achieving a near zero latency. Moving to customer intimacy. In France, we keep enriching customer experience, launching new offers with a new home cinema set-top box for our high-end customers and a 5G+ Fast Pass, providing dedicated connectivity at major events. We also introduced the Orange Marketplace, featuring over 8,000 high-tech products.
Also, Poland launched its B2C cyber app to protect users from cyber threats. About excellence at scale, the integration of MasOrange is completed, and we renamed it as Orange España to leverage our strong brand. In France, we continue to simplify our network architecture and have successfully completed the closure of the 2G network, a new milestone in the country's nationwide transition to very high-speed network solutions. Also, we tested an AI scanner for fixed network to detect anomalies and prevent disruption.
Finally, early September, we issued a EUR 4.1 billion bond at attractive conditions and four times oversubscribed. EUR 4.1 billion bond, four times oversubscribed. It reflects investors' strong confidence and allows us to anticipate future financing needs. In the current interest rate environment, you can note that around 90% of our existing debt is at fixed rates. I now leave the floor to Laurent for the financial overview.
Thank you, Christel. Let's start with France, with the third quarters confirming the strong trend seen in previous quarters. We delivered record net adds across the board in mobile, fixed, and particularly in convergence, with a record since 2018. Our retention programs are delivering results. Mobile churn is down by more than 1 point year-on-year, while fixed broadband churn decreased by more than 2 points year-on-year. On value, broadband ARPU increased year-on-year, fueled by multi-services growth and upsell, cross-sell actions. Convergent ARPU is up sequentially, while the year-on-year trends reflects mobile ARPU decrease. Globally, we actively push our more for more approach, enriching our offering and using the quality of our network and services to support pricing power while protecting churn and customer satisfaction. Turning to financial results, revenue is up by 0.5% in the third quarters.
Retail, excluding PSTN, is up 1.1%, reflecting our robust commercial performance and compensating the decline of PSTN. Customer satisfaction remains a key differentiator. Orange maintains its leadership position with an NPS of 36, nine points ahead of our closest competitors and best-in-class churn across all segments while continuing to offer our clients innovative offers. Equipment revenues were driven by strong demand for high-end device, uplifting our market share. Finally, wholesale legacy activity decreased at expected pace. Overall, the resilience of retail services and our commercial momentum supported revenue growth in the quarters. We are therefore fully confident in reaching our 2026 outlook for stable plus EBITDA growth. Moving to Spain, with revenues increased by 3.5% in the third quarters, supported by solid growth in wholesale and equipment sales.
Continuing the trend seen in the first half, services revenues improved sequentially by 0.5 points, led by ongoing B2B expansion across all market segments, improving retail trends, including positive fixed and mobile net adds and growth in convergence ARPU. Finally, a strong development in new services with 169,000 customers subscribing to financial services, home securities, energy or insurance. Action is in place to continue services trend improvement over the fourth quarters, supporting our outlook for low single-digit EBITDA growth in H2. Turning to Africa and Middle East, which continues to deliver exceptional performance. Revenues increased by more than 14% and was broadly distributed with 10 countries going double digit. Fixed broadband, data, Orange Money and B2B are all growing above 14%, driven by strong increase in ARPU and customer base, supported by demographic growth and expanded coverage.
This 14th consecutive quarter of double-digit revenue growth reinforces our confidence in achieving double-digit EBITDA growth for the full-year. Turning to Europe, which pursued a very dynamic of 5.3% in the third quarter in terms of revenue uplift. This reflects an acceleration on both convergence and exceptional IT and integration services. Net adds remain very robust in both mobile and fixed broadband, and convergent ARPU is growing by 5% in Poland. Orange Poland, in particular, delivered very strong results, outperforming the market with revenues up close to 8%. The acquisition of Nexera expands our fiber footprint by 30% and strengthens growth prospects of our FiberCo joint venture. Looking ahead, we confirm our outlook for Europe with a mid-single-digit EBITDA growth for the full-year. Looking at Orange Business, revenues declined by 2.5% in the third quarter, reflecting an IT market still affected by macro environment.
Against that backdrop, we are executing our transformation plan. First, focusing on our go-to-market on trusted AI, notably with our Live Intelligence AI offer, trusted cloud with our flagship Cloud Avenue SecNum solution, and in key trust verticals such as defense and security. Orange Cyberdefense accelerated its growth to 12% and reached EUR 1 billion revenues over nine months. Second, accelerating on cost efficiencies, in particular with the use of AI and resources mutualization. We are also starting to leverage our international go-to-market partnership with Tech Mahindra. That being said, the complex market environment is weighing on EBITDA improvement trend. With this, back to you, Christel.
Thank you, Laurent. Our strong Q3 and nine months performance gives us confidence in achieving our full-year objectives. It also enables us to raise our EBITDAaL growth guidance once again to above 4.5%, supported by solid performance across Africa, Middle East and Europe. Thank you for your attention. We are now happy to take your questions.
Hello. I see that a lot of you have raised a hand on the team, so please limit your question to one or two questions, but no more. The first one is Akhil Dattani from JPMorgan. Akhil, please, ask your question.
Hi. Good morning. Can you hear me?
Hello, Akhil. Don't forget to unmute. Akhil, can you try again? Okay. Akhil will come back. Next is Joshua Mills from BNP Paribas.
Hello?
Joshua, the floor is yours.
Hi, guys. Thanks for taking the questions. A couple from my side. On French consolidation, can you give us an update on the near-term timeline here? I think in the last conference call, you were talking about a signing in the second half of this year, and I believe the latest update is for December 6th. How significant is that date, and should we get more updates before then? With the Works Council discussions, is there any actual formal process by which they could block the deal, or is this just normal negotiations?
The second question is just around agentic AI, which is obviously being discussed a lot more as a risk for the sector by investors. I would like to know how you are thinking about that at Orange. Are you taking any steps to block the apps? How are you thinking about evolving your brand strategy in a world where customers are probably going to use AI more and more to compare price points? Thanks very much.
Thank you, Joshua . On the French consolidation timing, you are right, the timeline is unchanged. We plan signing of the transaction by the end of this year, 2026, and the closing by the end of 2027. We have two processes in parallel. Both were initiated when we signed the MoU. The first one is getting the approvals of employee representatives. We have done so at Orange. Bouygues has done so for Bouygues employees. Iliad has done so with Iliad employees. Altice has initiated the dialogue with Altice employees. In this context, there are some legal actions that Altice employees have initiated, which will continue to proceed, but we continue to have an open dialogue with the Altice employees. As I said it, we are strong believers of social dialogue.
At this stage, there is no reason to believe that these actions, and especially the legal action, would postpone the signature of the transaction by the end of this year. In parallel to that second very important item is the antitrust process, which we started when we signed the MoU, and this process is moving forward in parallel, and this is, of course, the process that will take most time and that will lead to the closing end of next year. On agentic AI. Of course, agentic AI is something we are actively engaged on. We have many initiatives in the company. This is true in customer experience, but this is also true in all our IT and software development internally. This is true for cybersecurity and Orange Cyberdefense is highly exposed to the booming evolution of cyber threats in the environment.
When it comes to agentic AI and especially personal agentic AI apps, this is something that we follow carefully. W hen it comes to the fear of automatic, I would say, price decrease by customers, first of all, this is something that we do not think comes as news because we already are very transparent pricing ecosystem in Europe. As you can see, we have a low end of the market that is active with actually very visible and transparent price points that are very different from our premium price points.
Despite that, we continue to drive differentiation and to reduce churn on our customer base. This is something that, of course, we follow carefully, more importantly, to make sure that all our tools and apps are well integrated into this new world of agentic AI, and especially gen AI as well. W e are not worried about a massive downgrade in the price point environment, which, by the way, is something we got used to facing with the very competitive markets we work in.
Thank you. Akhil, can you try again? I see you are still muted. If you unmute, can you-
Yes. Can you hear me now?
Yes.
Great. Thanks for taking the questions. I have two as well, please. Maybe first, if we could start on the French competitive environment. You have mentioned a very strong KPI performance that we have seen during the quarter. I would love to understand a bit better exactly what we are seeing. I am mindful that SFR suffered pretty high churn in June. Could you talk us through the dynamics at the moment you are seeing in the market? I guess specifically, what I would love to understand is that we have not seen these improving KPI trends benefiting your retail ex-PSTN trends this quarter. I just wondered if there is anything to call out or whether there might be a bit of a lag there. Anything around that would be super helpful.
The second question was on the comment, Christel, you made around the MSS spectrum. Obviously, there's been a huge amount of debate in the industry around the threat from satellite. I'd love to better understand what you're thinking around the role that you play in that environment. Obviously, you don't have satellites as a company or as a joint venture. Can you help us understand how you'd leverage that spectrum and how you think about the routes to defending yourself from satellite threat? Thanks a lot.
Thanks, Akhil. On the French competitive environment, Jérôme will complement, but we see, and I guess your question is related to the dynamic around SFR. First, when we look at our commercial performance, SFR is not the only operator from which we are benefiting from. We can track, of course, portability. We've seen a Q3 market environment very similar to Q2, with an overall stable competition on the high end, fixed broadband and mobile. The low end, that's in the continuity of Q2, slightly more rational than what we saw 12, 18 months ago. This has been the case already for a few quarters. The back-to-school period was as planned with no change, I would say, from any b-brand in the market.
On mobile, we have seen some improvements since the beginning of the year, especially on b-brand with the entry price point that are now more around EUR 10 for 20 GB versus EUR 8 in Q3 2025, so last year. Overall, a stable environment. When it comes to our commercial performance, I don't know if, Jérôme, you want to comment, but we continue to be driven by, of course, the convergent growth. Especially, you see the pressure on the mobile ARPU.
On convergent, of course, we continue to grow customers, and the new customers that are entering the cohort have typically one mobile only when we have a customer base in convergent where the average is more 1.8. That's weighing on the average revenue per user. This is nothing to worry about, and this is exactly as per plan. I don't know if, Jérôme, you want to comment more on the competitive dynamic?
Thank you, Christel, and thank you Akhil for your question. I think you underlined the strong commercial performance, which is reflected again this quarter with a record net adds on convergence since 2018, + 57,000. As you said, on mobile very strong as well, 146,000. This is not only the result of gaining market share towards SFR, but towards its net positive net adds towards all competitors in France. Pushing for value, of course, despite the pressure on the mobile ARPU, and particularly by managing on cross-sell, up-sell, including some tactical back book price increase to protect our value.
On the satellite and MSS spectrum, as we commented, we signed a letter of intent with Deutsche Telekom, Telefónica, Vodafone to potentially bid for one part of the MSS spectrum that is being auctioned end of 2027 for implementation in 2029. Of course, the bid for this spectrum would then be open and wholesale to all telecom operators in Europe. We see MSS spectrum really as a complement to our terrestrial network. As we have always said, for us, the key element will be the customer experience and the handover from terrestrial to satellite and back and forth between our networks, which really requires mastering both side of the experience, working also on the end sets. This is really the way we see it.
When it comes to the bid and the consortium to bid for spectrum, it is still early stage, so we cannot provide you more details. Again, the process is second half of 2027, so we will provide more detail as soon as we have.
Great. Thank you.
Okay. Now we are moving to Ondrej Cabejšek from UBS. Ondrej, the floor is yours.
Hello? I hope you can hear me.
Yes.
Okay. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for the presentation. I have got two questions as well. One is the follow-up on the French competitive dynamics. I guess, can you rule out that there is any kind of increased competitive pressure to, for example, already gain some of the higher value SFR customers that are already seeing higher churn at this point? SFR has raised prices, Bouygues has raised prices. I guess, are you confident in this environment despite the potential consumer pressure from what is going on in France that still going into 2027, we can continue to see positive trends on both the Retail ex-PSTN and EBITDAaL growth in France? That is question number one, please. Question number two, I think in Spain specifically, there has been a bit of a reversal in the trends following the stabilization that you flagged happened in June.
I believe you have also raised prices in the market and the bigger players, Telefónica, yourselves, and Vodafone are all seeing better trends. Can we expect a return to stability anytime soon, or is this kind of 1%-ish decline on the service revenue something that we should get used to for the time being? Thank you.
Thank you, Ondrej. On the French market dynamic and the SFR customer base, first and foremost, it is not as if we have seen a flow of SFR customers leaving SFR and willing to join. There is absolutely no massive trend in the market. We see portability, yes, but we also see portability going to SFR, so there is no massive leakage. Of course, we see a trend that we had anticipated as part of our bid for SFR, but not more than that. As you said, we have implemented some price increases, very targeted, so no massive. Some were, of course, in back book, some on front book. Very targeted as we had said. This is nothing new. As you commented, some of our competitors also did, and it is a mix of more for more and same for more.
Of course, in our case, we are also targeting copper customers to make sure that we line the price of copper up so that there is an incentive to move to fiber. When it comes to the dynamic on the premium part of the market, I would rather comment on all the actions and especially the additional services we provide to make sure we create an incentive for customers to be willing to take our premium package. The home cinema set-top box, for instance, that is attached to our premium package for broadband, and for which we have seen a very good start, and similar across the board. That is really our play, and we continue to execute on it, and we have no fear that this would change. Of course, we operate in a market that is competitive, so we continue to follow what the competition is doing.
When it comes to Spain, in Spain, as you can see and as we had said, we see a Q3 trend that is improving compared to Q2. We have some dynamic where, of course, our focus is on churn reduction because we have a market where, given we have the largest customer base, of course, churn is the top priority to avoid, I would say feeding the market. Our action plan is absolutely to continue to improve. We plan to continue to improve the convergent B2C ARPU trend, and as we have always said, we expect also growth to come from SOHOs and B2B given our already very large B2C customer base. I think, Meini, you are connected, so if you want to add something, please jump in.
Meini, we have opened your mic.
Hello?
Yes. We can hear you loud and clear.
Perfect. Thank you so much. Thank you, Christel. Overall, if you look at our results, we have been growing 3.5% in total revenues. If you look at the service revenues, we see a positive trend. Now we come down from -1.9% in Q2 to -1.4% in Q3. That is accompanied by a positive mobile and FBB net add strengths. Also important, we grow also in ARPU. In our analysis, we see that we are probably the only major operator in the market that grows ARPU also in acquisition. We have been able to increase our value share in the acquisition as well. This is a very good base together with the growth in B2B and in new services that we can say that we are optimistic that we will have a continuation of the improvement trend also in Q4 this year.
Thanks, Meini. Christel, can you just confirm, please, to follow up, but can you please confirm that the outlook therefore, based on everything that you were saying in France, is still positive growth for both retail xPSTN and EBITDAaL in France for 2027?
Yeah, our 2026-2028 guidance is unchanged to the Capital Market Day. When it comes to the landing for this year, it is still, as we said, stable plus EBITDAaL trend. That is also what we see for, and that is the trend for the full period. We anticipate the same for 2027.
Just to be precise on that, we are expecting H2 stable as well, stable plus. Definitively, we do not want to go negative on the H2 on the EBITDAaL of France, obviously.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. Now we are moving to Nick Lyall from Berenberg. Nick Lyall, the floor is yours.
Hello, guys. I hope you can hear me. It was just to come back to French ARPU, please, if you could. The ARPU did seem a little bit weaker this quarter versus some of the improving trends last quarter. Was that, I think, Christel, you've just mentioned, for example, differences in the addition of convergent subs, maybe with one handset, not 1.8. That might be a factor. What's the way on the ARPU here of low French consumer confidence? We're seeing worse and worse numbers coming through. What do you expect to see over the next couple of quarters in terms of ARPU development, and how do you approach that, please? Secondly, on just general government points. Anything you could update us on outlook for taxes or French government, maybe interference in dividends or others? Is there anything being discussed on that level, please?
Thank you.
Yeah. Thank you, Nick. On the ARPU, as I said, on the convergent ARPU, first of all, it's stable plus quarter-on-quarter. Indeed, it's slightly down year-on-year for convergence. As I said, it's mostly driven by the mix of offers of the new customers compared to the current cohort of convergent base. That's what's driving. Our cross-sell strategy is efficient and as I was mentioning, we continue to upsell on our base, driven by innovation and innovative offers. The example of the home cinema set-top box is a good example on broadband, and we've seen a very solid start already. That's from two weeks only, so of course, it's not in the Q3 numbers. We will continue to work on, of course, driving convergence and reducing churn is really our focus.
Upselling and driving value, but continue to play as well on the low-end part of the market. That's very important. From that standpoint, we play with all our brands and in the context of SFR, as you know, we will also acquire some MVNOs that will also complement our ability to play on the full spectrum of market segments. On the French tax environment. For what is being discussed at the French Parliament, there is nothing unknown and no surprise. There is, as you know, for last year already or two years ago, we had this surtax on income in post-profit tax, which had an impact of EUR 50 million last year. There are some discussion on actually reducing slightly this surtax, but as long as the budget is not approved in the parliament, it's very difficult to comment. We don't see anything else specific.
Nothing specific to the telecom sector. As you know, in the current pressure on purchasing power, given the very attractive and low prices in France for telecom compared to other countries in Europe, our sector is absolutely not targeted. We already pay a lot of taxes, so I think we contribute to the full equation.
Clear. Thanks very much.
Thank you. Andrew Lee was the next one, but obviously your hand is no more displayed. I want to make sure that it's not a mistake. Andrew, have you a question? If not, we will move to Mathieu Robilliard. Andrew? Okay. Let's move to Mathieu. Mathieu Robilliard from Barclays. Mathieu, the floor is yours.
Yes. Good morning, all, and thank you for the presentation. I had two questions. The first was about Spain. As Meini and Christel, you flagged that the service revenue trends have improved a bit compared to the previous quarter. What I wanted to understand was what was driving that. The reason I'm asking that is because when we look at some of your competitors, we see some healthy service revenue growth, but it seems to come with very low margin. That is losing maybe some high-margin telecom revenues, replacing it and offsetting it with low margin, other types of services. I wanted to understand how is the revenue mix evolving in Spain, and if your target to stabilize service revenues is going to be at the detriment of the margin. The second question was a broader question about the French political situation.
We're all aware of what is happening. I was wondering if you're seeing any impact on the B2B or the corporate segment from the higher uncertainty and maybe that is impacting OBS or not. Thank you.
Thank you, Mathieu. On Spain, you're right to point that we're the only operator to grow the convergent ARPU. This is a decision to really focus not just on commercial net adds, but more on also value. This is value-driven, so to somehow some less aggressive, I would say, price position in the market to try to have some impact given we have the largest customer base on the overall market dynamic. This is something that we are absolutely focused on, making sure we focus on value and not just on gross adds and driving prices down. We have many brands in Spain, so we can play with our different brands. The Orange brand is, of course, our premium brand, and we have regional brands. We have low-cost brand, digital low-cost brand.
That's really what Meini and the team are working on to make sure we play on the diversity of our brand positioning to maximize the value. That has also some impact, and we hope that the full market will do so. On the French political situation, of course, uncertainty is never good for business and investment. As a business, we like stability and to be able to plan. This is probably not a good environment. Most of our customers and what we provide to customers, when mentioning cybersecurity or resilient connectivity, is something that our customers cannot compromise. From that standpoint, of course, even though some decision could be postponed on some big transformation when it comes to cybersecurity, connectivity or secure cloud solution, this is not something that customers compromise.
Of course, the overall environment, and especially on the small businesses, customers tend to be conservative and maybe not aggressively embracing a new solution. I don't know if Hugo or Aliette, you want to comment. This is something you would expect in this type of environment. As you can see now in our numbers, because the situation is not specific to France. Of course, we have also a difficult environment elsewhere in Europe. Some of the discussion we've had in Europe for now many years on the price of energy is, of course, weighing on the P&L of companies. This is true also for consumers and purchasing power. Of course, that's not helping us in France with our Orange Business turnaround given that puts a lot of pressure on prices for customers.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mathieu. Now it is Stéphane Beyazian from ODDO BHF. Stéphane, we are listening to you.
Thank you. It is obviously too early to talk about 2027 in terms of guidance, but clearly 2026 is a good year and sets a higher bar, a higher base for 2027. I was just wondering whether you can already comment on some of the factors, the growth drivers that you have today. I am thinking, for instance, of the savings and to what extent you can maintain that drive into 2027, or which factors you expect perhaps to disappear and that have helped 2026. I have got a second question. Is it possible to have an idea if Sosh is still growing as part of your total customer base in France? I was also curious, how many customers do they have taken the Cybersecure product? Thank you.
Thank you, Stéphane. On 2027 guidance, as you said, it is too early to provide some details. First, as we reminded, we are consistent with our CMD trajectory of an EBITDAaL CAGR of +3%. Of course, 2026 is off a very good year with a remarkable performance of MEA, some one-off co-financing in France, and a very strong performance of Europe. We take that into account. When it comes to 2027 and 2028, we want more of the same, which is focusing on solid commercial performance and continue to drive our efficiencies to make sure we can deliver on this EBITDAaL growth.
I just want to add, Stéphane, that efficiency remains, of course, a top focus for us. You will see an acceleration on the efficiency in the second half of 2026 versus the H1. We will definitively continue to drive upward the efficiency, AI, and all our transformation in terms of operation will continue to bear fruit in 2027, of course.
On the Sosh performance, Jérôme?
Yeah. Thank you, Christel. Sosh is growing as well as the Orange brand. We are playing on both A and b-brands, of course. On the past quarters, volumes were mostly driven by the Orange brand, which is a part of our convergence strategy. Sosh is contributing positively as well, and we are focusing on churn improvement on both brands as well. As you saw, we partnered with Carrefour to launch a C brand this quarter to be able to cover the whole spectrum of offers and customer needs. As far as Cybersecure customers are concerned, we have more than 400,000 customers so far, and we are increasing our range of product, preparing additional services to enrich the Cybersecure proposition on both B2C and B2B professional services.
Thank you.
Okay, now we are moving to Roshan Ranjit from Deutsche Bank. Roshan, we are listening to you.
G reat. Thank you for the questions. Got two, please. Hopefully very quick. Just touching back on the satellite topic, whilst I appreciate not a fully fledged perhaps D2D offering, can you give us some data on your Skylo product. I think it has now been just under a year of that product. Any adoption rates? Any initial feedback you have on that, please? Secondly, Orange Money. I think it is another quarter of 15% revenue growth. Any details you could give on percentage of the Africa, Middle East unit that is, any changes in customer behavior? People using it more, more spend, or is it just the volume growth that is supporting that revenue growth? Thank you.
Thank you, Roshan. On satellite, you are right to mention we launched this first offer a year ago, actually, with Skylo in France. As you know, we are testing several solutions. We are also testing Starlink in Spain, and we have a pilot under preparation in Romania with AST. When it comes to the Skylo offer, it is very little. We have been able to test the willingness for customers and the appetite in the market for this type of offer. That being said, the Skylo experience, given its geostationary solution, it was only available on a few devices. It was as expected. It was for us a test in the market to test the appetite to position ourselves on this segment.
O f course, we plan to continue to add especially more device options, given it was limited to only customers buying these new Pixel devices, which was a very small part of the market. From that standpoint, we achieved what we wanted, test the appetite, but we were not planning for massive adoption. We know there's willingness for customers to embed this type of solution. On your second question regarding Orange Money, it's a right opportunity to ask Yasser to comment on the exceptional performance.
Thank you, Christel. Maybe just quick on Orange Money, and specifically, I think we had very, yes, as you said, we had very good results. I'm not only happy with the results of the top line, honestly, because the underlying performance is the one that counts. Despite that we have some pressures on the top line and on the fees that we're charging, in fact, still we were able to do this revenue growth because of mainly three things. One is related to the customer experience and integrating our services on a digital platform, which is now more and more Max it. The second is that we're pushing a lot on merchant payments. If you see on our merchant payments, we have more than 50% increase only in the last six months.
The same goes on microcredits, where we also increased our microcredits with over 50% over the last six months. These are maybe the three main activities that are ensuring that we continue to grow on Orange Money. W ill continue to grow, I think, in the next quarters to come.
Thank you. Now, Russell Waller from New Street. You can ask your question.
Thank you very much. G ood morning, everyone. I just have a couple if that's okay, please. O bviously, as I'm sure we're all aware, rates are rising. The French 10-year, obviously much higher. How does that make you think about the NPV of synergies? Also, the sector has derated as well, obviously, since the time that the deal was announced. Is there any risk that the price could be renegotiated with SFR? Is there any mechanism for you to do that, for example? Second question. Obviously, there's a French election next year. Do you have any idea what the other parties think about the deal? Obviously, if there's a change of government, they'll be your largest shareholder, therefore, what they think is important. Can you give us any kind of pre-warning of anything that might change there? Then the third question, just a quick one.
I think your mobile network faced an outage because of the global problems. Should we expect to see any impact to the Q4 numbers in France? Thank you.
Thank you, Russell. On the SFR transaction, you're right to mention that the debt and the interest rates evolution are obvious part of our market environment. A s you know, we have a solid balance sheet, and most of our debt is on a fixed rate. We issued a new bond, oversubscribed earlier this year. When it comes to price renegotiation in the transaction, we have some mechanism to adjust the price depending on the performance of SFR over time in the transaction. O f course, we won't disclose the detailed mechanism. As we said, we had foreseen for the evolution of the business of SFR. For the time being, the trend is as foreseen. W e don't see any change from that standpoint. W e continue to work first on signing the transaction.
Of course, very important, the antitrust process was triggered by the MoU that we signed in June. Any renegotiation or something would have an impact on the antitrust process and would have an impact on the calendar of closing as well. This is in an environment where I think back to your question on what the political parties and the various stakeholders think of the transaction. I think there's a broad consensus that SFR is in a situation where the rise of interest rates is probably weighing on their financials. That means they are probably even more eager to conclude the transaction than they were before. As you know, SFR is managing critical infrastructure for France and for millions of customers.
This is something that I think all political parties are aware of, and we have not seen any negative comment to the proposed transaction from any political party in France. From that standpoint, even though the antitrust process is managed by an independent body, the antitrust agency is independent from the political parties. We have not seen any bad reaction from any political party. On the mobile network outage that we had last week, this is not related to the overall security environment that we saw in France. This is unfortunately something that happens. It was a network outage driven by one equipment in our core network. It is unfortunately a failure. It did not impact all our customers, but it impacted several millions of our mobile customers.
It took a few hours before we have been able to identify what was the issue with the vendor involved and then to restore the traffic. Of course, we have taken proactive action with our customers to compensate them, especially at doubling their data package for the next month. We do not foresee any impact on our financials in October from that mobile outage.
I may add a few words we said on the balance sheet, and that you alluded to, just to remind a number of facts. Our fixed rate component on our financial debt is 92%. We are extremely well protected in terms of interest rate increase, with as well a maturity of 7.2 years. As well, very long in terms of global maturities. I just want to add as well that we have been issuing close to EUR 14 billion in the last 12 months. Our liquidity position in June was EUR 11 billion of available cash, not counting the EUR 4 billion of incremental bonds we have issued end of August, early September. Very solid and very visible situation on our balance sheet.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Now we are moving to Fernando Cordero Barreira from Santander. Fernando, we are listening to you.
Thank you for taking my two questions. The first one is related, is a follow-up on Africa, Middle East. Basically, we have seen in the third quarter a slowdown on the volume growth, particularly mobile. I just would like to understand to which extent this is an impact of any non-recurrent factor or if there is a change on the strategy on trying to move from volume to value in order to maintain the double-digit growth profile of the region.
The second question is, as a general topic on your devices strategy, we have seen an acceleration both in Spain, the activity remains quite strong, and there is an acceleration in France. Where can we see the ceiling or the, let's say, the level of penetration of device activity within your customer base? Just to understand when that growth or how sustainable the growth in devices is not only just on the revenue, but also thinking on the churn impact. Thank you.
Thank you, Fernando. On Africa, Middle East, it is not that we have seen a slowdown in mobile revenues, but indeed we have a flat mobile customer base in Q3, but this is mostly technical, and this reflects some implementation of KYC regulation in several countries, which had some impact on our customer base, but absolutely no impact on the business growth and the revenues. On devices and equipment performance, we have a very solid environment. In most countries, actually, we overperform the market dynamic. This is driven, of course, largely by devices sale, but also by some of our Orange Marketplace activity, in Spain, but now also the new Orange Marketplace in France. T his is mostly driven by also the high-end devices in terms of growth.
When on volume, actually, we see an environment with prices that are moving up because of memory and components, which of course, is driving revenues up as well. I t is price driven on top of the solid volume performance, especially on the high-end part of the market and the Orange Marketplace performance. We have handset financing or device financing, you are right, in part of our equipment sales, which of course is a nice loyalty feature or churn reduction, but we have not seen any change on our practices from one quarter to another. We are used to managing that with our customer base.
Just as a follow-up, if I may. Can you share us at least qualitatively, which is the level of device penetration within your customer base, particularly in conversion in your main markets in order to understand the still potential impact in churn and consequently at the end on the [inaudible] going forward?
Our device penetration is low given it is not offered. First of all, most of our customers, when they have a mobile package with us, it is not attached to a device sale. Depending on our brands, by the way, this is not even eligible. W e do not have the data of how much of our customer base is attached to a device financing or a device package, but it is a low number compared to our full customer base.
Okay. Many thanks.
The difference in terms of churn, when we have a device financing, especially in European countries, is 4-point difference when there is a device attached to a mobile package compared to when there is not.
Hello. We are at the end of this Q&A session with financial analysts. I just remind to the journalists who are connected that the Q&A session for journalists will start slightly after 10:00 A.M. at 10:00 A.M. sharp. I now hand back over to Christel Heydemann for concluding remarks.
Thank you for joining. Our strong Q3 performance gives us full confidence in our 2026 guidance, including our upgraded EBITDAaL growth target above 4.5%. Commercial momentum is strong across our footprint, and our efficiency plans remain firmly on track. Our financial position is solid. Our balance sheet and liquidity are strong. We remain focused on delivering our Trust the Future strategy and capturing the significant opportunities ahead, including the SFR acquisition that is progressing as planned. Thank you all.