Strong commercial and financial results despite COVID-19 crisis; 2020 guidance achieved
05 Febbraio 2021 - 7:00AM
Strong commercial and financial results despite COVID-19 crisis;
2020 guidance achieved
Press releaseEmbargo until 5 February 2021
at 7:00 am Regulated information – Inside information
Financial information for the fourth quarter and full year
2020
Strong commercial and financial results
despite COVID-19 crisis2020 guidance
achieved
- Mobile postpaid customer base +2.4% yoy / Cable
customer base +26.3% yoy
- Q4 Revenues -7.2% yoy / Q4 Retail service revenues
+3.0% yoy
- Q4 EBITDAaL +7.9% yoy
- Proposed stable dividend at €0.50 per
share
Q4 Operational Highlights |
- Orange Belgium delivered positive commercial
results despite the continued COVID-19 measures (shops
opened with limited capacity) and aggressive subsidy campaigns by
the competition.
- GO portfolio continued to be successful despite a
highly competitive environment. During the quarter, 26k
new mobile postpaid customers were added, reaching 2.6m subscribers
(+2.4% yoy).
- Cable net adds were strong with 22k new customers, back
to pre-lockdown levels. The naked broadband offer
introduced at the beginning of the quarter showed positive results
and Love Duo continues to represent one third of gross adds.
Convergent mobile subscribers now represent 20.3% of mobile
postpaid customers, up 435 bp vs Q4’19.
- B2C convergent ARPO decreased by 4.0% yoy to
€73.6, due to the growing Love Duo customer base with a
lower price point, which already represents more than 20% of the
customer base, as well as discounts on mobile tariff plans in
convergence.
- Mobile only postpaid ARPO declined by 3.1% yoy to
€19.8, due to the decrease in out-of-bundle revenues from
roaming and mobile data, partly offset by customers migrating to
higher tariff plans in the new GO portfolio.
|
Orange
Belgium: key operating figures |
|
|
|
|
Q4 2019 |
Q4 2020 |
change |
Mobile
postpaid customer base (in ‘000) |
2,579 |
2,641 |
2.4% |
Net adds (in
‘000) |
31 |
26 |
-16.4% |
Mobile only
postpaid ARPO (€ per month) |
20.4 |
19.8 |
-3.1% |
Cable customer
base (in ‘000) |
258 |
326 |
26.3% |
Net adds (in
‘000) |
25 |
22 |
-14.9% |
B2C convergent
ARPO (€ per month) |
76.7 |
73.6 |
-4.0% |
Convergent
mobile customer as % mobile contract customer base |
15.9% |
20.3% |
435 bp |
|
|
|
|
Q4 Financial Highlights |
- Revenues reached €343.0m, down 7.2% yoy.
Retail service revenues continued to grow by 3.0%, mainly thanks to
higher convergence services (+20.0% yoy). As in former quarters,
COVID-19 impacted wholesale revenues (-17.3% yoy) mainly due to
lower incoming SMS revenues (-€13.8m, offset by lower SMS
costs).
- EBITDAaL grew 7.9% yoy to
€85.9m, driven by higher retail service revenues, but also
due to lower costs (-11.3% yoy –mainly SMS, roaming, labour and
equipment costs). The Bold Inside
transformation plan has produced structural cost efficiencies again
with a 2.5% reduction in indirect costs. Cable EBITDAaL
was positive at €7.0m (+€3.7m yoy).
- eCapex increased 16.1% yoy to €70.9m, mainly
explained by a catch-up from previous quarters.
- Debt closed at €144.9m with gearing at
0.5x.
|
Orange Belgium Group: key financial figures
|
reported |
comparable1 |
|
comparable |
reported |
reported |
comparable |
|
comparable |
reported |
in €m |
Q4 2019 |
Q4 2019 |
Q4 2020 |
change |
change |
FY 2019 |
FY 2019 |
FY 2020 |
change |
change |
Revenues |
369.5 |
369.5 |
343.0 |
-7.2% |
-7.2% |
1,340.8 |
1,363.1 |
1,314.9 |
-3.5% |
-1.9% |
Retail service
revenues |
222.8 |
222.8 |
229.5 |
3.0% |
3.0% |
857.3 |
878.7 |
905.9 |
3.1% |
5.7% |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
EBITDAaL |
79.6 |
79.6 |
85.9 |
7.9% |
7.9% |
300.1 |
299.2 |
323.5 |
8.1% |
7.8% |
margin as % of
revenues |
21.5% |
21.5% |
25.1% |
350 bp |
350 bp |
22.4% |
21.9% |
24.6% |
266 bp |
222 bp |
eCapex |
-61.1 |
-61.1 |
-70.9 |
16.1% |
16.1% |
-180.2 |
-180.2 |
-177.7 |
-1.4% |
-1.4% |
Operating cash flow2 |
18.6 |
18.6 |
15.0 |
-19.0% |
-19.0% |
120.0 |
119.0 |
145.8 |
22.5% |
21.5% |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Net financial
debt |
234.3 |
|
144.9 |
|
|
234.3 |
|
144.9 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
- Comparable base includes Upsize N.V. 2019 before
acquisition
- Operating cash flow defined as EBITDAaL – eCapex
Xavier Pichon, Chief Executive Officer,
commented:
2020 has been a challenging year.
The world has been confronted with an
unprecedented crisis impacting people’s every-day life, as well as
forcing companies to completely review their way of doing business.
Over the year Orange Belgium has been in the forefront, playing an
active role by helping society to deal with this crisis. We have
always put the safety and health of our customers, team members and
suppliers first. We managed to upgrade our network in an extremely
short timeframe to cope with the increased demand for capacity
which arose with the different lockdowns.
Notwithstanding these headwinds, 2020 has also
been an important year, thus building the future. We created
MWingz, the joint venture with Proximus, which will start
implementing our mobile radio access network sharing with Nokia,
enabling better network coverage, faster roll-out of the 5G
network, and a structural reduction in costs. We also continued to
stimulate the market by introducing our GO portfolio, being the
first operator in the country to provide a mobile family offer.
This has proven successful and we intend to continue migrating our
customers to this new portfolio. Throughout the crisis Orange
Belgium has shown strong resilience. Despite all the challenges we
faced, we were able to provide our customers with the services they
expected and delivered excellent commercial results, and the
consequential financial outcome.
Arnaud Castille, Chief Financial Officer,
stated:
Despite the challenges we were faced with during
2020, we were able to increase our retail service revenues over the
year, which are the foundations of our business. In addition,
through our Bold Inside transformation programme we were able to
reduce our costs over the year, which will also impact the
following years. We continue to simplify our processes and our
offers, which will be beneficial both to our customers and cost
control.
Resuming commercial activities after the
lockdown enabled us to achieve our ambitions from a commercial and
financial perspective. In line with our guidance, revenues over the
year have decreased slightly, but this is mainly due to the
decrease in low- to zero-margin activities, such as SMS
interconnection revenues and handset sales. The (high-margin)
retail revenues have increased more than 3% on a comparable
basis.
Our results were in line with the guidance we
had foreseen for 2020. Our EBITDAaL is within the mid-range of our
guidance at €323.5m up 8.1%, which is a combination of increased
retail service revenue and cost efficiency, thanks to our Bold
Inside transformation programme. We expected a slight decrease in
revenues and eCapex, which resulted in a 3.5% decrease in revenues
and 1.4% reduction in eCapex.
2020 dividend
The Board of Directors will propose a stable
dividend of €0.50 per share for the 2020 financial year at the
Annual General Meeting.
2021 outlook
Orange Belgium expects low single-digit revenue
growth in 2021. The Company targets EBITDAaL of between €320m and
€340m. Total eCapex in 2021 is expected to be between €200m and
€220m.
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