Altice said group revenue fell by 2.7 per cent year on year to €4.26 billion ($4.85 billion) in the first quarter of 2016 after a "challenging" quarter in France was offset by growth in its international operations.
The company, which owns the French Numericable-SFR group, said revenue in France fell by 6.1 per cent to €2.57 billion while international revenue grew by 1.3 per cent to €1.14 billion.
Group adjusted EBITDA increased moderately by 0.9 per cent to €1.61 billion, although in France adjusted EBITDA was 9 per cent lower at €851 million. International adjusted EBITDA was up 12.6 per cent, boosted by a 20.9 per cent rise in adjusted EBITDA in Portugal.
Altice said the situation in France had been challenging in the first quarter of the year due to heavy promotional activity, but said it had stabilised its customer base in the market.
It noted that its unit in Portugal had been able to reduce its quarterly revenue decline to 3.5 per cent in the first quarter of 2016 from 8.7 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2015.
Altice CEO Dexter Goei commented that Portugal Telecom "is well on track to become the bellwether operator in the European communications space."
Goei added that the company was confident that it would be able to improve its position in France through its accelerated network investment programme, content-enriched service offering and operational improvements.
SFR has already announced its plan to buy Altice's 49 per cent minority stake in media company NextRadioTV and Altice Media Group France as part of a converged strategy to strengthen SFR's product offerings, aiming to reduce churn, increase ARPU and revenue growth.
For more:
- see the Altice release
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