French telco Iliad's core profit rises 2% on Italy strength

By Leo Marchandon and Rihab Latrache

Aug 27 (Reuters) - French telecom operator Iliad posted a 2.2% rise in its half-year core profit on Thursday, buoyed by strong performance in Italy.

The company's earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization and after leases, or EBITDAaL, were €2 billion ($2.3 billion) in the first half of 2026.

It reported consolidated revenue of €5.24 billion for the six-month period, up 3% from a year ago. Revenue in France rose 1.5% to €3.32 billion, Italy posted a 10.2% jump to €665 million and Poland grew 3.5% to €1.26 billion.

The numbers underscore how Iliad has evolved from a French price disruptor into a broader European telecoms group, with Italy and Poland contributing an increasing share of growth as the domestic market approaches saturation.

The group added 300,000 subscribers in the second quarter, resulting in a total customer base of 52.5 million at the end of June. France ended the period with 23.4 million subscribers, while Italy and Poland added about 100,000 customers each to reach 13.3 million and 15.8 million, respectively.

FUTURE GROWTH IN AI COMPUTING

Iliad CEO Thomas Reynaud declined to disclose revenue for Scaleway, its AI computing subsidiary, but said it was growing by more than 50% a year.

Scaleway, which counts Airbus, LVMH and ChapsVision among its customers, is a strategic focus for Iliad which seeks to tap into the European computing build-up, where Amazon, Microsoft and Google still control the lion's share of the cloud market.

OpCore, the data centre operator jointly owned by Iliad and InfraVia, provides the physical capacity on which Scaleway can run cloud and AI workloads. Reynaud said the venture was targeting 400 megawatts of capacity across Europe, most of which has yet to be built.

That would exceed the current capacity of Roubaix-based OVHcloud, Scaleway’s larger European rival.

($1 = 0.8582 euros)

(Reporting by Leo Marchandon and Rihab Latrache in Gdansk, editing by Milla Nissi-Prussak)