Bouygues Telecom said Thursday it had picked up one million new mobile phone customers last year, allowing the French telecom operator to return to profit. Net profit came in at 83 million euros ($87.5 million), after a loss of 59 million euros in 2015. The new mobile customers pushed its client base to 13 million at the end of December, it said.

"The positive commercial and financial results of Bouygues Telecom in 2016 confirm its strategic choices," chairman Martin Bouygues said in a statement. Exceptional items affected overall profits positively, as the 84 million euros Bouygues had to pay to share its network with fellow French operator SFR was outweighed by the 104 million capital gain it made from the sale of telecom masts to Spain's Cellnex.

Some two thirds of Bouygues' customers have adopted 4G technology with a monthly data use of 4.2 gigabytes per month on average, against 2.4 a year earlier, said the operator, France's third-largest. Orange, France's leading mobile phone operator, also Thursday reported its net profit grew nearly 11 percent to 2.93 billion euros in 2016.

Profits were helped by a one-off gain of 4.5 billion euros from the sale of just over four percent in British operator EE. It was the first year since 2008 that Orange managed a rise in both its sales and Ebitda, a key measure of operating performance, finance director Ramon Fernandez told reporters. Sales in Orange's home market France declined by 0.9 percent as income from roaming charges dropped.

Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2017