French operator Bouygues Telecom reported sales for the first half of 2021 up 14 percent year-on-year to EUR 3.5 billion, helped by its acquisition of MVNO Euro-Information Telecom at the end of 2020 and organic growth of 5 percent. EBITDAal rose 7 percent to EUR 758 million, in line with the projected growth rate over the full year.
Service revenues were up 5 percent on an organic basis, boosted by the growth in both mobile and fixed customers and higher ARPU. Bouygues maintained its forecast for around 5 percent organic service revenue growth in the full-year 2021. Other sales rose 14 percent year-on-year in the first half, driven by demand for handsets.
The EBITDA margin was down 2 percent points from a year ago, hurt by the takeover, the migration to FTTH and a loss of EUR 10 million in roaming revenue due to the pandemic. Operating profit in the first half rose to EUR 335 million from EUR 254 million a year earlier, helped by a one-time gain of EUR 91 million on the sale of data centres.
Bouygues Telecom reported gross capex of EUR 754 million for the six months, up 30 percent from a year ago thanks to a focus on enhancing network quality, expanding 5G coverage and the acquisition integration. The company reiterated plans to invest around EUR 1.3 billion over the full year.
Bouygues ended the period with 14.5 million postpaid mobile customers (excluding M2M). The total grew by 2.1 million since the start of 2021 thanks to the acquisition and 258,000 organic net adds. After reported growth of 141,000 in Q1, that means net additions of 117,000 for Q2. On the total Sim base of nearly 21.4 million, ARPU reached EUR 19.8 on a 12-month rolling basis, up from EUR 19.0 a year earlier.
In the fixed market, Bouygues counted 4.294 million broadband subscribers at the end of June, after a slower increase of 34,000 new customers on a quarterly basis. Fixed broadband ARPU rose to EUR 27.8 from EUR 27.2 in Q2 2020.
The broadband base included 1.9 million FTTH customers, after 156,000 new adds in the second quarter. This puts 45 percent of fixed customers on fibre, up from 30 percent a year earlier. Bouygues
Telecom had 20.9 million FTTH premises marketed at end-June.
