Despite all of SFR’s efforts, customers continue to flee, while subscription prices soar. What’s happening ? Is this the end of the operator?
The telecom operator SFR is going through a tumultuous period. At the heart of the storm is Altice, its parent company, entangled in Portugal in a corruption scandal which is shaking the very foundations of the group, led by business magnate Patrick Drahi. This difficult context, coupled with a less efficient network than that of its competitors according to Arcep data, weighs heavily on the operator’s performance, which continues to see its customer base and financial indicators erode significantly. worrying.
The most significant setback for SFR is measured at the level of its customers. In 2023, while the telecoms landscape in France sees certain players like Orange, Bouygues Telecom and, above all, Free, expanding their subscriber base, SFR appeared to be the weak link with an alarming erosion of its customer base, with more than 583 000 deserters on the mobile part alone. And it’s not going to get better in 2024! Almost 500,000 subscribers – 487,000 to be exact – from its mobile segment slammed the door during the first quarter – almost as many as in the whole of 2023! Also on landlines, SFR recorded a loss of 77,000 subscriptions over the last three months. Small consolation: fiber recruitment amounted to 69,000.
Faced with this hemorrhage, SFR is trying to regain the initiative by simplifying its fixed offer, promising more clarity and performance in its services. But, above all, it passes on the costs to its remaining customers, by discreetly increasing the price of its subscriptions! In recent days, subscribers have received notifications at the bottom of their bill to inform them of an increase! This is the so-called value strategy. To put it simply, the operator stopped the price war and the race for subscribers to, instead, increase prices and retain the subscribers who earn the most.
The financial results for 2023 reveal the extent of the difficulties encountered by Altice. Its turnover is down 3.8% compared to last year, with an overall turnover of 2.564 billion euros in the first quarter of 2024. All with a debt amounting to 60 billion euros, if we bring together Altice International, Altice France and Altice USA – Altice France alone represents a hole of 24 billion dollars.
In an attempt to turn things around, Altice France has decided to sell its media branch (BFM-TV), but also its fiber activities (XPFibre), its Portuguese operator Meo and Teads, the company specializing in online advertising video. . But this financial maneuver hardly reassures… The situation is so critical that Patrick Drahi is seeking to partially sell SFR for 3 billion euros. Could this big sale herald the end of the FAI? Because, if the subsidiary of the Altice group remains the second operator in France with just under 20 million mobile subscribers, the gap is widening with Orange and its 24 million, and, above all, is narrowing with Bouygues and Free …