Patrick Drahi’s public speaking is extremely rare. And the situation must therefore be serious enough for the founder of Altice, owner in France of the telecommunications operator SFR and the media group BFM-TV, to agree to break his silence in the heart of summer. . Serious, the arrest in Portugal, on July 13, of his partner and close friend, Armando Pereira, for eleven presumed financial offenses (corruption, tax evasion, forgery and use of forgery, money laundering, etc.), is certainly serious. It even shakes his empire.
The Franco-Israeli businessman will thus benefit from conference calls presenting the half-yearly results of Altice International and Altice France, scheduled for August 7 and 8, ordinary meetings during which the manager is not used to to speak, in an attempt to reassure investors.
Without them, he would never have been able to get his hands on SFR and Portugal Telecom in 2014, then buy, in 2015 and 2016, the American cable operators Suddenlink and Cablevision, before seizing, in 2017, the house of Sotheby’s auctions and to become, this year, the first shareholder of the British telecommunications operator BT. Patrick Drahi knows very well that the fall of his right arm, if it were to spread, could cause everything to collapse.
Since July 13, on the financial markets, the value of bonds issued by the various companies in the group has been under pressure, proof of the growing nervousness of Altice’s creditors. Their fear: the snowball effect that the discovery of these presumed fraudulent practices could cause. Currently confined to Portugal, they risk harming the reputation of the entire group, its activity and therefore the repayment of its debt. This shows “significant weaknesses in internal controls” of the company, underlined the American rating agency Moody’s in a study published on July 20. “It is difficult to imagine that this Portuguese affair has no impact on Altice France” whose financial situation was already strained, supports François Baudet, financial analyst at SpreadResarch.
Altice France alone, which owns SFR, the main asset of Mr. Drahi’s group and whose management was monitored on a daily basis by Armando Pereira, bears nearly 24 billion euros in debt. Of this amount, 1.6 billion euros must be repaid or refinanced with new debt in 2025. But this is nothing compared to the mountain that awaits the operator between 2027 and 2029, with 20.6 billion to be repaid. or refinance. To ease the burden, asset disposals, including that of SFR’s data centers, about to be completed, had been launched in recent months. At Altice International, owner of the former Portugal Telecom, the debt reached 8 billion euros.
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