If the second French operator maintains its rank for the moment in 2024, it nevertheless continues to suffer setback after setback. After an already difficult 2023 financial year, marked by the loss of 315,000 mobile subscribers and 158,000 fixed line (box) customers, resulting in a 1.3% drop in revenue, SFR, the subsidiary of Altice France, saw the black series has gotten worse since the beginning of this year. In the first quarter, 487,000 subscribers canceled their mobile contracts and 77,000 on landlines. In three months, the loss recorded is greater than that of an entire year, leading to a 3.8% drop in turnover. Incidentally, SFR falls below the symbolic threshold of 20 million subscribers (19.9 million) in March 2024. Not very talkative about the reasons for this drop, management only mentions the “competitive context” to explain it.
The fall continued in the second quarter: the company founded in 1987 only has 19.6 million customers, a loss of 343,000 mobile subscribers and 87,000 landline subscribers. Over one year, turnover decreased by 5.2%, to 2.54 billion euros. A decline aggravated by the colossal debt of its parent company, Altice France, which reached 24 billion euros, without an agreement in principle having been reached at this stage between Patrick Drahi’s group and its creditors. But the owner of SFR has concluded several sales in recent months, including that of its 24.5% stake in British Telecom, sold for 3.6 billion euros in August.
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Bouygues Telecom is doing much better than SFR. But the subsidiary of the construction, real estate and media group has nevertheless just announced a strategic plan for 2030, focused on the return to profitability, which provides for a non-replacement of departures, a reduced use of service providers external and “a reduction in investment needs” from next year, among others. Like SFR, BT indicates that market conditions, starting with the price war and weak growth in mobile, require a new roadmap. It should be detailed in the coming weeks, but the operator announced on September 2 that it no longer expects to achieve some of its objectives set for 2026, in particular due to an expected drop in the average price paid by mobile customers. .
Facing “increased competition” in the second quarter, Bouygues Telecom will launch a new brand on October 7: B.iG. A commercial offer in response to that of Free (Free Family), unveiled on October 1, which offers its customers the opportunity to combine an Internet package with several mobile plans, so as to reduce the bill by 5 to 10 euros per month depending on the number of lines – up to ten – and 7 euros per month for an Internet box. Free, a subsidiary of the Iliad group founded by Xavier Niel, however, had a very good first half and joined the top 5 European operators, with growth of 9.6% since January. And the gain of 120,000 new subscribers on mobile and 40,000 on landline.
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