SFR fails to stop the bleeding: almost half a million fewer subscribers over one year

The operator in the red square displays economic health in accordance with its logo. During the presentation of its results for the year 2023, SFR confirmed the decline of its financial situation.

The news will not surprise observers in the world of telecoms, but it is still symptomatic of the descent into hell that SFR is going through at the moment. The operator, once the jewel of the Altice group, continues to lose subscribers en masse in recent months.

The flight of customers continues

In a press release issued on the occasion of the announcement of the company’s quarterly results, SFR indicates that it has 20.4 million mobile customers as of December 31, 2023, or 230,000 fewer than last quarter. Over one year, the figure is even worse with 315,000 fewer customers compared to the same time last year.

Things are not much better on landlines since the operator shows a net loss of 73,000 customers in the fourth quarter of 2023 and 158,000 customers in total since the start of last year. By combining the figures for mobile and fixed subscribers, SFR has lost nearly half a million subscribers in one year. Not enough to pay off the debt which now stands at 24.3 billion euros.

Things should not go well for Patrick Drahi’s group. After a drop in turnover of 1.3% in 2023, the operator forecasts a drop of around 5% in its gross operating profit in 2024. The fault lies in a recent increase in prices which has clearly not managed to convince a public particularly concerned about questions of purchasing power.

Altice is at its worst

After announcing discounted offers quarter after quarter in the hope of retaining customers, the operator tried to increase the bill to increase the average revenue per subscriber. An operation which did not meet with the expected success, with customers preferring to go to the competition to take advantage of more interesting offers.

Beyond this economic slump, the Altice group is also embroiled in a corruption affair in France and Portugal with, at the center of it all, Armando Pereira, co-founder of the group and former right-hand man of Patrick Drahi. To deal with the wall of debt that threatens the company, the businessman has already completed the sale of his Media subsidiary (BFM and RMC) to the CMA-CGM group and is also considering separating from XpFibre, which holds the operator’s fiber optic network.

• without engagement
• SFR

Source : The gallery