Today has seen an avalanche of financials fall on the industry, as Orange, Proximus, Millicom, Ooredoo, Swisscom, Telenet and KPN all release earnings statements.

“During this first quarter, the final weeks of which were struck by an unprecedented crisis linked to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Group continued its growth momentum in terms of revenues (+1.0%) and EBITDaL (+0.5%),” said Orange Group CEO Stéphane Richard.

“This growth has been underpinned by strong performances in our Africa & Middle East business, progress in the Enterprise market, in France and in Europe.

“The importance of telecoms in this crisis in ensuring the continued functioning of the economy and of our societies confirms the strategic nature of our activities and provides further confirmation for our strategy in very high-speed networks.”

“With most of Proximus’ business showing a good level of resilience in these exceptional circumstances, along with our strong cost management, we realized stable EBITDA,” said Guillaume Boutin, CEO of the Proximus Group.

“It’s clear we are not fully immune to the ongoing COVID crisis, and we expect the impact to become more apparent over the next quarter. The economic recovery remains uncertain and especially Roaming and ICT projects are exposed to further negative effects.

“While it’s very difficult to have a clear view of what the overall impact will be, so far, there are no signs the financial effect would be worse than what we have anticipated, with the EBITDA effect largely being offset by a lower capex. We therefore reiterate our 2020 full-year guidance of Group EBITDA Capex of EUR 780-800 million.”

“In light of the severe impact that COVID-19 is having on the global economy and in many of our markets, we have already implemented significant measures to help us navigate through these challenging times, which we anticipate will impact our revenue at least through the remainder of 2020,” said Millicom CEO Mauricio Ramos.

“These measures include a reduction in capex made possible by focusing largely on adding network capacity while deferring other investment plans, and the implementation of new cost savings initiatives.”

“In Q1 2020 Ooredoo Group has increased our revenue and we have delivered good results Growth was driven by strong performances in most of our markets, and in particular in Indonesia and Tunisia where revenues grew 7% and 16% respectively, supported by Indosat Ooredoo’s refreshed strategy and the implementation of Ooredoo Tunisia’s value creation plan,” said Group CEO Sheikh Saud bin Nasser Al Thani.

“Business in Myanmar has been growing as well. Ooredoo Qatar continues to be our highest revenue generator, reporting QAR 1.8 billion in total revenues for Q1 2020.

“The implementation of nationwide lockdowns across many of our geographies impacted EBITDA as margins came under pressure due to changing customer behaviour. EBITDA for Q1 2020 was QAR 3.0 billion compared to QAR 3.2 billion for the same period last year. We continue to implement strong cost optimisation programmes across all our OpCos to manage some of the impact from the pandemic and weakening economic activity.”

“The market environment is challenging. But Swisscom’s results are sound, given the circumstances. The demand for our bundled offerings continues. Our network is the foundation of our success. This is evident in the current COVID-19 crisis,” said CEO Urs Schaeppi.

“Meetings via video conference in the home office, distance learning in the children’s room and contact with friends via telephone and FaceTime are now part of everyday life – with corresponding effects on the infrastructure.

“We recorded 70% more mobile phone calls in March than in the previous month. And in the fixed network, we reach peak levels every evening at prime time with TV and streaming services. Before the crisis, this only happened on Sunday evenings. Swisscom’s networks are continuing to hold their own, even at this time.”

“Against the backdrop of these current exceptional circumstances, I’m pleased with the solid underlying operational performance in Q1, continuing the improved momentum we’ve seen since the second half of last year,” said Telenet CEO, John Porter.

“While gross sales have clearly decreased since the closure of our retail stores as of mid-March, this effect was more or less compensated by lower annualized churn. We had a particularly strong quarter in broadband, adding 8,100 net new subscribers and marking our best quarterly performance since Q2 2016.”

“From a business perspective, COVID-19 has had a limited impact on our operational KPIs and financial results in the first quarter,” said KPN CEO, Joost Farwerck. “We continued with the execution of our strategic plan and saw continued intense competition in the Dutch market, resulting in a lower customer base in Consumer.

“Mobile postpaid ARPU in consumer stayed at € 17 for the fifth consecutive quarter. In Business, we made again solid progress with customer migrations towards our KPN EEN portfolio; 82% of our SME and 62% of our LE customers migrated from traditional fixed voice or legacy broadband services.

“We continued to digitalize and simplify our organization, which led to strong cost savings in the quarter. In Wholesale, the announced assessments of regulated tariffs were discontinued by regulator ACM following the CBb court ruling on wholesale fixed access regulation