This was not enough however to stop the company’s shares from falling by 4% to E76.60 million over disappointment in organic growth figures and revenues from domestic fixed-line services.
Organic growth fell by half of a percent to 7.5% from just above 8% in 2000. There was an overall fall in comparison to last year revenue from fixed services, voice and data fell by 1.8% mostly as a result of recent cuts in tariffs for domestic and international calls, as well as lower rates for calls to mobiles.
France Telecom’s group revenue was of E10 billion ($8.89bn) in the three months to March 31, outside sales more than doubling. International sales accounted for about a third of revenues in the first quarter, compared with 25.8% in 2000.
Sales at Orange, which accounted for a third of group revenues, rose 33% on a comparable basis to E3.4billion. It contained 15.1million subscribers in France, giving it a domestic market share of 48.2%. Domestic sales rose 19% to E1.5billion.
