Wanadoo ups revs, narrows losses

Europe's number two ISP, Wanadoo, expects to have more than one million broadband customers by the end of 2002.

Publishing half year results today the French ISP - which owns the UK's Freeserve - also reckons it will have some 15m customers throughout Europe by 2005, up from 6.8m active subscribers today.

The monster ISP generated revenues of €918m during the first six months of 2002 - up 33 per cent on the same period last year.

This growth was mainly due to an 89 per cent increase in revenues from Internet access, along with a 45 per cent rise in revenues from its Internet directories business.

Earnings before interest, etc (EBITDA) were €28m, compared to an EBITDA loss of euro;54m during the same period last year.

Wanadoo's Net access and portal business racked up €516m during H1 compared to €305m a year before. This part of the business still managed to make an EBITDA loss of €87m, down from €147m in 2001.

No figures were available for the performance of individual country ISPs. Neither was anyone at Wanadoo or Freeserve available for comment at the time of writing.

But in a statement Nicolas Dufourcq, chairman and CEO of Wanadoo, said: "Wanadoo's results for the first half of 2002 reflect the company's strong performance.

"With revenues increasing 33 per cent and positive EBITDA of 28 million euros one year ahead of initial forecasts, Wanadoo has demonstrated its ability to achieve profitable growth in Internet access and online services." ®