Bouygues Telecom sees return to EBITDA growth in 2015

French operator Bouygues Telecom reported EUR 1.1 billion of revenue in the second quarter, stable on the year-earlier period, and down by 1 percent to EUR 2.2 billion in the first half. The company's EBITDA rose by EUR 21 million to EUR 323 million in the first half, raising its EBITDA margin by 1.5 percentage points to 17.1 percent. The company recorded a EUR 54 million current operating loss, a EUR 17 million improvement on the first half of 2014, and an operating loss of EUR 109 million, including EUR 55 million in non-current charges essentially related to the roll-out of network sharing with Numericable-SFR in the first half. 

Following the solid performance in H1, Bouygues raised its outlook for 2015 and now expects an increase in EBITDA to around EUR 750 million from EUR 694 million in 2014. It previous forecast a flat result. The company said it expects to largely surpass its earlier target of EUR 300 million in cost savings in 2016 compared to 2013. These restructuring measures and the costs of setting up its network-sharing agreement with SFR will lead to around EUR 200 million in one-time charges in 2015. 

Bouygues Telecom added 160,000 new mobile customers in the second quarter and over 312,000 in the first half to reach 11.4 million mobile customers at the end of June. Postpaid customers, excluding M2M, rose by 293,000 in first half and by 147,000 in the second quarter. The company had 4.1 million LTE customers at the end of June, or 42 percent of the mobile base excluding M2M, up on 19 percent a year earlier. LTE customers consumed 2.4 GB of mobile data per month on average.  

Bouygues Telecom continued to expand in fixed broadband, adding 78,000 new customers in the second quarter and 174,000 in the first half to reach a total of 2.6 million at the end of June. The operator had 23,000 FttH customers on its own network at the end of June, out of 398,000 total customers on very-high speed broadband (30 Mbps+).