Orange's results were officially posted this morning after last week's accidental earnings leak. While earnings were known to have jumped 102 per cent, the main figure you'll want to know is that the mobile phone company has seen its operating profit triple to £514 million.

This all comes on the back of a huge 52 per cent growth in its customer base. The latest figures we have show Orange as the leading provider in the UK with 11.9 million customers (then BT Cellnet with 10.89m, Vodafone 10.54m, One2One 7.6m, Virgin 1.0m).

The company still managed to make a £314 million loss though - down from £365 million year-on-year. And it still has £3.8 billion of debt. Company CFO Graham Howe said: "Orange is showing rapid growth, improved margins and a very powerful balance sheet." The company also reiterated plans to expand abroad into new countries in the next few years.

After all that though, the City wasn't over impressed and share price is actually down a tiny amount at the moment. Mind you, this is mostly to do with the 8 per cent jump it experienced following the earnings leak. ®

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