Altice France’s subsidiary has lost 702,000 subscribers over the last year (if you leave 4G dongles out of it), adding to the parent company’s considerable woes
SFR, Altice France’s mobile arm and the second largest mobile operator in the country has shed almost half a million subscribers in Q1 of this year. It was not unexpected after price rises and the end of discounted offers passed the cost of inflation onto customers.
La Voix du Nord reports it is the only French mobile operator to stop promotional periods for new customers – Orange reduced its special promotional period for such customers from a year to six months at the end of 2023.
The net loss of 487,000 customers takes the country’s second largest operator (behind Orange) to below 20 million subscribers. The net loss was 231,000 in the previous quarter.
According to the French website GNT, since last Q3 the operator has taken to including 4G dongle subscriptions in its numbers, and reckons that overall, SFR has in fact lost 702,000 mobile subscribers in the last year.
Better fixed
There’s better news on the fixed side. SFR lost 77,000 set-top box subscribers in Q1 of this year, but the number of fibre subscribers grew by 69,000 fibre, taking the total to approaching 5 million.
SFR’s turnover reached €2.5 billion in the first quarter, down 3.8% year on year with earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation down 6.5% to €782 million.However, these falls are in line with the operator’s expectations for 2024.
As GNT puts it, translated from the French, “The main objective for this year is supposed to be deleveraging” while its parent, Altice France, is in a standoff with its creditors over debts of more than €24 billion.
The Altice group is controlled by billionaire Patrick Drahi and is also suffering the fall-out from a criminal investigation into fraudulent accounting in Portugal. The group’s co-founder, Armando Pereira, is still the subject of a police investigation. The French police are also looking into if there is a case to answer from there.