(News Bulletin 247) – The group has unveiled the strategic plan for 2025 of its CEO, Christel Heydemann, and is aiming for a slight increase in its main result indicator.

The French telecoms giant Orange has established networks and infrastructure, cybersecurity and the Africa-Middle East zone as its strategic priorities for 2025, according to the roadmap presented Thursday by its new CEO, Christel Heydemann.

“We are aiming for sustainable growth in particular in our cybersecurity activities and in Africa and the Middle East. We have already laid the groundwork for the plan: sale of OCS (the television subsidiary, editor’s note), consolidation projects in Spain and Belgium, targeted acquisitions in cybersecurity,” she said, quoted in a press release.

In particular, the company is targeting growth of 7% per year between 2022 and 2025 in the Africa and Middle East region and also anticipates “strong growth” in its profitability in this region.

The group also intends to generate revenues of 1.3 billion euros over the same period in cybersecurity.

An expected dividend increase

Through this strategic plan, Orange is aiming for slight growth each year in its Ebitdaal (roughly gross operating income after rents) over the period 2022-2025. The group expects to generate an organic cash flow for its telecoms activity of 4 billion euros by 2025. The return on capital employed (ROCE) is expected to increase in 2025 compared to 2022.

The dividend is also expected to rise to 72 cents for 2023, 75 cents for 2024 against 70 cents for 2022.

Orange has also announced that its investments will be reduced as a percentage of turnover. From a peak of 18% of revenues in 2022, they will increase to 15% in 2023 and throughout the duration of the strategic plan.

“This slowdown concerns France and Europe in particular, where the bulk of investments in fiber have been made. However, Orange will continue to invest to strengthen its network leadership”, specifies the company.

After saving 700 million euros between 2019 and 2022, the telecom operator plans to generate new savings of 600 million euros by 2025.

Net profit multiplied by three

This plan was unveiled alongside the company’s 2022 results. The French telecoms giant Orange recorded a net profit multiplied by 3 in 2022, to 2.62 billion euros against 778 million euros in 2021, due to an increase in operating profit, a-t- he announced on Thursday, confirming that he had “achieved” his goals for the year.

Turnover was up slightly (+0.6%) over one year, at 43.47 billion euros, supported by the Africa and Middle East zone (+6.4%). The objectives for 2022 have been “achieved”, with in particular a gross operating surplus after rents up 2.5%.

Driving force of the group, the Africa and Middle East region is driven by the increase in 4G customers (53 million, +19%) and revenues up 18% in the mobile data segment.

Recovery of activity in Spain

In France, the group’s main market, turnover fell by 1.1%, to 18 billion euros, despite the conquest of 339,000 new fiber customers over the year.

In Europe, where Orange is present in seven countries, it returned to growth (+0.6%) thanks to the recovery of its activities in Spain, which confirmed in the fourth quarter the rebound begun in the previous quarter, and the good performance of the Poland (+4.7%) and Belgium (+2%).

The turnover of Totem, the subsidiary that owns and manages the passive mobile infrastructures of telecommunications towers in France and Spain, reached 685 million euros (+14.9%).

In 2023, Orange aims to achieve a gross operating surplus after rents in “slight growth” or even an organic “cash-flow” (cash flow) from telecom activities “of at least 3.5 billion euros. “.

These are the first results and the first strategic plan presented by Christel Heydemann, who arrived in April following the forced departure of Stéphane Richard, the former CEO of Orange between 2011 and 2022, condemned on appeal in the file of the controversial arbitration in favor of Bernard Tapie.

(With AFP)