Orange SA

PAR:ORA

Earnings Call Transcript 2019-Q3

[Ramon Fernandez]

Good morning, and welcome to the presentation of our Q3 2019 results. We're going to start with Slide 4, which presents the Q3 and 9 months' results. In Q3, top line growth accelerated, confirming the improving trends of 2019, and EBITDAaL grew slightly as the unfavorable effect of digital content offers continued. Group revenue grew at plus 0.8% versus plus 0.5% in Q2 driven by a very strong Middle East and Africa growth, a good performance of Orange Business services in Europe, more than compensating a slight erosion in France and a decline in Spain. It's worth to note that Africa and Middle East now accounts for 13.2% of total revenues. And this quarter, Africa and Middle East grew by EUR 103 million, largely compensating for the decrease of EUR 33 million in Spain. In Q3, EBITDAaL grew at 0.2% versus 0.9% in Q2. And looking at the first 9 months of the year, EBITDAaL grew at 0.6%. In order to better assess the underlying performance, as we have done in previous quarters, let's look at our financials excluding the digital content offers. In Q3, group revenue grew at plus 1.1%, and EBITDAaL grew by 1%. If we look at the 9 months' figures, Group revenue grew at 0.7% and EBITDAaL grew at 1.7%. The 9 months eCAPEX grew by EUR 200 million to EUR 5.2 billion mainly due to the acceleration of fiber rollout in France, but we confirm our guidance for 2019 eCAPEX slightly below the 2018 peak level excluding the impact of the rent-sharing deal with Vodafone in Spain below EUR 100 million.The next slide highlights our continuous efforts to strengthen our network premium. The acceleration of the fiber rollout in France led to an increase of 2.8 million new connectable homes, a 53% increase compared to the first 9 months of 2018. Overall, we reached a total of 37 million very high broadband connectable homes, of which 14.6 million both in France and in Spain and 4 million in Poland.The Group keeps consolidating its leadership position in 4G, reaching a coverage exceeding 95% of the population in all European countries and already commercialized in 15 Middle East and African countries. Our network superiority was recognized for the ninth consecutive year in the French regulator annual mobile survey. And finally, actively preparing for 5G, we launched 4 5G Orange cities, and we will launch commercially 5G next week in Romania, our first 5G country. These investments allowed us to consolidate our leadership position in Europe in 4G and in FTTH. We now serve at group level more than 65 million 4G customers and more than 7 million FTTH customers, an increase by 25%, thanks to France, which posted the highest-ever third quarter for FTTH net adds, and Spain, which reached FTTH 77% penetration rate in its broadband customer base.In France, we launched our new box, the Livebox 5 enabling a speed increase up to 2 gigabytes per second per household, thus answering better to our clients' needs to use an increased number of equipments within the household. It is also equipped with a smart WiFi for an increasingly effective and stable connection, which reduces disruption caused by neighboring WiFi by automatically selecting the best frequency and the best channel. We took the opportunity of these improvements to proceed to a front book price rise by EUR 2 on our value offers, Livebox Up and Open Up both on fiber and ADSL. Last but not least, mindful of our environment responsibility, we managed to reduce the carbon footprint of the new Livebox by 29%.In Spain, thanks to the renewal of our football rights end of July, we are now the only one with Telefónica to offer football to our clients, consolidating our position in the value segment.Finally, we kept on enriching our Orange Bank offers with the launch of cash back offers in July and of credit offers allocated to specific purchases in our shops in October. We have now reached 344,000 Orange Bank accounts, and we will be launching Orange Bank in Spain next month.Now let's turn to our business review, starting with France on Slide 8. In Q3, total revenues decreased slightly by 0.4%. They increased by 0.2% if we exclude the digital content offer's impact. In order to better assess the underlying performance, let's, as in previous quarters, analyze our retail activities, excluding the digital content offers. We see that retail services, excluding PSTN, increased by 1.5%. This is the same level as in Q2. Convergent services revenues grew by 4.8%, thanks to the growth of the broadband B2C convergent customer base at plus 2.9%. The convergent ARPO grew by EUR 0.82 at EUR 67.2, driven by the increase in the number of lines per convergent offer and the price increase in autumn 2018.Mobile Only ARPO grew by EUR 0.01 over 1 year to EUR 17 in Q3, despite the continuous migration into convergence, and this is driven by the 2018 price increase and a better mix. And if you look at the Broadband Only ARPO, it fell by EUR 0.50 to EUR 36.3 in Q3 due to a higher Sosh mix and to an unfavorable effect of the Football World Cup last year, which boosted the ARPO, thanks to a significant take-up of pay-TV customers.Equipment sales decreased by 4% in Q3, mainly due to a slowdown on the handset market as customers tend to replace their terminals less frequently. And finally, wholesale revenues grew by 3.3%, driven by growth in visitor roaming and FTTH, both of which offsets the decline in unbundling and national roaming.Turning to the commercial performance in France. This was a quarter with still significant levels of promotional activities, but with a clear improvement in the market pricing dynamics. On mobile, we registered plus 90,000 net adds, with the high-end mix improving by 0.1 point. We observed an encouraging movement of price hikes in the French market as EUR 5 lifetime offers stopped being commercialized, replaced by EUR 10 offers, which were increased to EUR 12 in the last week of September.Our mobile churn is down by 2.3 points and stands at a low 12.1%, mainly due to convergence and the good performance of Sosh. Convergence remained a strong acquisition tool, supporting our performance, both in fixed and mobile, with 116,000 net adds in mobile and 35,000 net adds in fixed. The latter fueling the convergent base now at 5.8 million convergent fixed customers. This is now 55% of our broadband B2C customer base. Convergence remains a strong acquisition tool as 83.5% of new convergent customers are new mobile and/or new B2B -- sorry, broadband customers.On fixed, we recorded 65,000 broadband net adds, with the high-end customer mix improving by 1.1 point. This solid performance is supported by 2 elements. First, a record quarter for Q3 on fiber with 178,000 FTTH net adds. In Q3, 65% of our FTTH gross adds are new customers, leading to 3.1 million FTTH customers. And it was also supported by the success of Sosh 2P, which is also a strong acquisition tool as 73% of our Sosh 2P adds are newcomers to Orange.With the launch of the Livebox 5, as I said, we increased prices into the front book by EUR 2. And in mobile, we will continue in the coming weeks with the same more-for-more commercial and pricing strategy.Turning to Spain. In Spain, the market keeps shifting towards the middle- to low-end segments, and revenue decreased by 2.5% this quarter. In spite of a back-to-school promotional period, which was a bit less aggressive than last year. Retail services are particularly impacted by this environment, with revenue decreasing by 4.7% in Q3 and 2.7% over 9 months.Equipment sales also followed a downward market trend with a revenue decrease by 12.7% in Q3, while wholesale posted a solid growth at 15.7%, mainly thanks to international traffic.As a challenger, our aim in Spain is to maintain our position of a strong #2, providing high network quality, both on fixed and mobile, thanks to an efficient sharing policy is one of the building blocks of this strategy. And that's why consistent with this sharing and co-investment approach, we have extended our contract with MÁSMÓVIL in September, thus securing a total cash inflow much above EUR 1 billion over the extended contract period and also providing a natural hedge against retail market evolution.In addition to the network sharing contract we signed with Vodafone in April this year, this contributes to our objective to deploy our network at an optimized cost. In this context, our objective during the third quarter was to preserve our customer base together with value on the high end of the market, on which we have a solid performance, and also to use our multi-brand portfolio in order to adapt to the market shift towards low-end segments, on which we have to improve our share of growth without cannibalization effect.Thanks to the new football offers that we launched in July after obtaining the renewal of our football rights, we reversed the trend on TV clients net adds, switching from minus 41,000 in Q2 to plus 47,000 in Q3. This also drove the fixed broadband commercial improvement, posting a minus 6,000 net adds, continuously increasing over the quarter to be compared with the minus 27,000 in Q2 and also helping the significant improvement of the value mix of our gross adds year-on-year. This performance was also fueled by fiber net adds reaching 79,000 in Q3, bringing the penetration rate of fiber into the broadband base to 77%.On mobile contracts, we keep on using our 5 brands tactically, thus maintaining positive net adds at plus 12,000 in Q3. And in order to maintain our focus on value, we implemented a bank book repricing beginning of July, impacting half of the convergent customer base with a service upgrade approach, both on the Orange brand and the Jazztel brand.In spite of an increase in mobile contract churn by 2 points between Q2 and Q3, these price rises enabled a sequential convergent ARPO increase by 0.7% in Q3 compared to Q2, reaching EUR 57.9.Generally speaking, in Spain, we focus on efficiency with an ambition to keep growing our [ EBITDA ] margin rate in 2019.Let's now to -- turn to our Europe segment, where total revenues grew by 1.4%, a slightly faster rate than the 1.2% growth rate in Q2, supported by a strong momentum in retail services, up 3% versus 2.5% in Q2. As explained in previous quarters, the minus 4.6% drop in wholesale services is mostly due to the loss of a MVNO contract in Belgium last year, an adverse effect, which will end in Q4. This momentum in retail services reflects, first, our ongoing focus on convergence with convergent revenues maintaining a growth above 30%. I recall that convergent revenues are now representing 17% of total retail services; and second, this reflects our success in IT and integration services progressing vigorously at plus 22%.Our focus on convergence supported our commercial performance with 86,000 mobile contract net adds and 45,000 fixed broadband net adds this quarter. From a country perspective, we are reporting a fifth consecutive quarter of revenue growth in Poland at plus 2.5%, up from plus 2% in Q2.In Poland, beyond the continuing progress of convergence with revenues up by 19%, the other growth drivers this quarter were IT and integration services and also equipment sales.Our revenue performance at Orange Belgium is also worth mentioning as we posted plus 2.5% growth this quarter, despite the end of the MVNO contract mentioned earlier. This performance was driven by a 54% growth in convergence revenues with stable convergent net adds compared to a year ago and a very solid mobile performance. And once again, next week, we will be launching 5G in Romania.If we focus now on Africa and Middle East, we see that our operations in this region keep bringing a very strong contribution to the overall group performance. This quarter, Africa and Middle East was again the main contributor to growth with revenues increasing by 7.6%. The revenue performance was driven by a very solid growth of retail services at 10 -- plus 10.2%, and this was fueled by first, data, with 22.5 million 4G customers, growing by 49% year-on-year.Orange Money, second engine for growth, with an active customer base of 16.6 million customers, up 22%, with revenues growing by 29% and fixed broadband also growing by a strong figure, 25%, with now over 1.1 million customers. This very strong performance in Africa and Middle East was also supported by the stabilization of outgoing voice.Looking at the commercial KPIs, the mobile client base increased by 5.1%, up to 124 million customers, also fueling top line growth. The customer base quality keeps improving as reflected by an increase of 2 points in the charged base rate and also a reduction of 5 points in the mobile prepaid churn.From a geographical perspective, except for Niger from which we are exiting, all countries in our footprint grew in Q3, including 8 countries at a double-digit pace. The top contributors to total revenue contributed a solid growth in Q3. Sonatel -- the Sonatel cluster grew by 6.9% with a strong retail performance, thanks to data and Orange Money. Egypt grew at 7.8%, also sustained by data development. And the Ivory Coast cluster grew at 7.5%, sustained by data there also.Turning to the Enterprise segment. Q3 revenues grew by 1.8%, driven by continued IT and IS performance -- I'll come back to this in a second -- at 9.4%. And also supported by the resilience of data services at plus 1% fueled by the success of Enterprise fiber and WAN offers in France. These good results more than offset the continued decline of voice at minus 7.9% in Q3, which now represent less than 17% of the segment's revenues and also the decline of mobile at 3.8%.Turning back to IT and integration services. These activities now represent 36% of the segment revenues at the end of September 2019. This was, by the way, the objective we had set in 2015 with our strategic plan Essentials2020. And this was growing at a pace of 7%, fueled by the double-digit growth of CyberDefense and Cloud, the latter being driven by the one-off effect of a significant contract.As a reminder, M&A pro forma rules negatively impacts the reported growth of CyberDefense and Cloud that's, respectively, plus 17% and plus 16% over the first 9 months of 2019. If you consider organic growth, revenues of cybersecurity and cloud were growing by 25% and 21% year to date.Regarding commercial activity, we won new contracts this quarter in the IT and IS fields, among which Mobileye, an Intel company that chose OBS' IoT services to develop smart vehicle solutions. And in the cloud business, we obtained a new market distinction from IDC that considers OBS a major player in Europe for managed services in cloud.So let's close with our guidance for the year. With our solid H1 and Q3 results, we confirm our guidance for 2019, excluding the impact from the network sharing deal with Vodafone in Spain. This means, first, slight growth in EBITDAaL; second, eCapEx, which will decrease slightly below of the 2018 peak level; third, operating cash flow continuing to grow; fourth, ratio of net debt excluding IFRS 16 lease liabilities to telecom EBITDAal will remain at around 2; and finally, regarding the dividend for the fiscal year 2019, we confirm our guidance of a floor of EUR 0.70 per share.In addition, we will pay a EUR 0.30 interim dividend on December 4, 2019. Precisely December 4, 2019, will be the date for our Investor Day in Paris. Initially, we had intended to do this on the 5th of December, but there is a strike in France on the 5th of December, so we thought it would be a better idea to convene all of you on the 4th of December in Paris, and this will be an opportunity to present our perspectives for 2023, 2025.Thank you all for your attention. I'm here with my colleagues of the Executive Committee, and also on the line we have Laurent Paillassot in Madrid and Jean-François Fallacher in Warsaw. And we are now ready to answer your questions.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] We'll take our first question today from Andrew Lee from Goldman Sachs.

[Andrew J. Lee, Equity Analyst]

I have 2 questions, both on France, please. The first one was on the French churn reduction. You delivered a meaningful reduction year-on-year this quarter. Is that -- I think it's 220 basis points. Is this trend continuing? And do you think it's possible we could see a single-digit percentage churn rate in the next 12 to 18 months or in the foreseeable future? Any color around that would be very helpful. And then secondly, on French fixed line, we just noticed that Broadband Only ARPO was down EUR 0.50 year-on-year in Q3. That's worse than the EUR 0.36 for year-on-year in Q2. Do you think the fixed pricing environment for you specifically is actually getting sustainably worse as you face more fiber competition?

[Fabienne Dulac, Deputy CEO & CEO of Orange France]

It's Fabienne Dulac speaking. Is it possible to reduce the churn rate in France in the coming months? I think it's a target, but we -- you know that we have a very low churn rate in France on the mobile, 12.1%. It's very low, maybe the lowest of the market and when we observe and when we compare to the competition. And the fixed is the same. And on the convergent, we are around between 7 points to 8 points. So we are under the 10 points on the convergent offer. And it's, I think, a very good performance in a very aggressive market and turbulent market. And this is a proof we can resist, and we have a resilient customer base. So yes, we will try, but I think the result we have today is very performant. The second question is -- okay. We forecast a flattish top line year-on-year. The market is still very aggressive and turbulent, and the ARPO broadband is decreasing, but it's because the majority of the Orange customer migrate to open convergence where the ARPO is growing quarter after quarter and year-on-year. So yes, we tried to raise our price, as you can see, when we launched the new box in October. And we -- at the same time, we raised some price in the back book, too, on the mobile or on the fixed. So all the strategy we have is to sustain the top line in a very aggressive environment, specifically in the fixed. If we observe a sign of appeasement on the mobile, the fixed line is still very aggressive. We are confident that the strategy we have with the Fiber, with the Convergent and the [ multi-targeted ] strategy will be able to help us to maintain the growth of the top line and especially on the fixed line.

[Operator]

We'll now go to our next question today from Abhilash Mohapatra from Berenberg.

[Abhilash Mohapatra, Analyst]

I had one on operating leverage, please. So this quarter, even after adjusting for this sort of VAT headwinds, the sort of operating leverage is probably lower than what you've been delivering in recent quarters. So if you could tell us maybe was there some phasing of costs? And do you expect the growth to sort of pick up strongly in Q4? That would be helpful.

[Ramon Fernandez]

Okay. Sorry, I -- we were trying to understand if your question was -- I thought [ it was on ] France, but obviously, you are still at a group level. So yes, EBITDAal is growing at 0.2% instead of higher figure in Q1 and Q2. You have calendarization effect, which is seen quite often also where Q3 is traditionally a bit less strong in this perspective. You still have also the VAT impact of the ePresse offers. So we had a strong Q3 in 2018 which has a base effect impact, which is another element here, but we expect to see a higher figure in the next quarter. Then depending on the operations, but you know we are not elaborating too much in Q3 on what's happening in different regions. But if you just take 2 examples, you have a very strong translation of the growth in revenues in Africa. This is one point playing in the positive side. If you take another side, which would be Spain, you've seen that growth in revenues is not there because we have a decrease of 2.5%. It obviously, has also an impact on the profitability, even though we are still aiming at having some positive figure for EBITDA in Spain in 2019.

[Operator]

We'll now take our next question from Nayab Amjad from Citibank.

[Nayab Amjad, Vice President]

I have 2 questions. Firstly, what is your outlook for wholesale revenues in France and Spain? With the new agreement with MÁSMÓVIL in Spain, do you expect an acceleration or a slowdown in wholesale revenues in Spain? Secondly, I have a question on infrastructure strategy. Would you consider carving out the tower assets into a separate entity with an aim to reflect the true valuations as your peers have? Also, would you consider monetizing some of the assets if an opportunity arises?

[Ramon Fernandez]

So we'll turn to Laurent first, Paillassot, in Spain for the question on wholesale in Spain. I will just quickly take the third question. And then afterwards, we'll go to Fabienne for wholesale in France or Jérôme. Just to -- on the infrastructure question, which is clearly a hot topic, we will have a plenty of time on the 4th of December to disclose and explain in many details what we want to do with our infrastructures. We know that we have very strong assets here and that there is probably some room to, let's say, demonstrate the value of these assets. So you will have to be patient and wait until early December. Please come to Paris, and you will hear a lot about these issues.Now Laurent on wholesale in Spain.

[Laurent Paillassot, Senior Executive Vice]

Yes. [ Maybe ] thank you for the question to all of you. Basically, the wholesale revenue this year, they're growing, basically driven by the international traffic. If you take out this element, this is still growing, and we expect with the new contract of MÁSMÓVIL that this trend will remain. So there will be a slight growth on the wholesale revenue. Again, the agreement with MÁSMÓVIL is, as you understand, is securing the existing agreement that we have for another 6 years, so basically up to 2028, which is basically over -- close to EUR 1 billion of value in this contract. And on top of that, we have an agreement on the sharing on 5G. As you remember, we had an agreement with Vodafone for all the cities below 175,000 inhabitants. Now with this agreement with MÁSMÓVIL, we also will be sharing on mobile 4G and 5G technology in the larger cities, over 175,000 inhabitants, which allow us to be able to deploy 5G in a very efficient way and in a very distinctive way also in the Spanish market.

[Ramon Fernandez]

Thank you, Laurent. Jérôme Barré for wholesale in France.

[Jérôme Barré, Senior Executive Vice]

Okay. So as you noticed, we have a strong and solid growth in wholesale in France with 3.3% growth for Q3. As Ramon said, we -- this growth is fueled by different trends. First is the optical fiber deployment with co-investment from our competitors. The second is a very good trend of incoming revenues of our international roaming. And last but not least, we noticed the growth and the construction of public initiative networks. As you might imagine, these trends will continue in the future, at least into Q2 in 2020. So we expect this solid growth to continue in the next quarters.

[Operator]

Our next question today comes from Roshan Ranjit from Deutsche Bank.

[Roshan Vijay Ranjit, Research Analyst]

Two for me, please, and some follow-ups. Just firstly, in Spain, you previously talked about repositioning some of your many brands in that market. I think that was at the beginning of the summer. Trends are still fairly tough in that market. Have you had to revise your strategy, how you approach things in that market? And just on a subset there, the mass model contracts you've talked about it being more front-end loaded under the new agreement and also some pricing clauses that provide some security for you. Are you able to just provide a bit more detail there? I assume that's to do with some of the volumes. And secondly, on France, just going back to some of Fabienne's comments. When you refer to the top line, are you stating that you're still comfortable in seeing top line growth for the full year in France, given the tailwinds of the better price environment that we are seeing?

[Ramon Fernandez]

Laurent?

[Laurent Paillassot, Senior Executive Vice]

Yes. Maybe a few highlights on the Spanish market. What's going on in Spanish market, as we speak. Basically, there is slowdown in the growth -- overall growth of the Spanish market. Just to take a look at the net adds, 9 months' net adds versus last year. Basically, the market has slowed down by 40% -- so still growing, but half of the speed it was growing before. That's the first trend. The second trend is most of the growth is happening in the low-cost segment, okay? And by the way, if you're looking at what's going on in the low-cost segment, it is not so much MÁSMÓVIL and all these brands with MÁSMÓVIL that's been growing. If you look at [ capitation -- ] the share of [ capitation ] on the Spanish market, in fact, Lowi and DIGI has grown in term of [ capitation ] -- share of [ capitation ] by 10 points. So they do represent 10 points more than they were 1 year ago. And by the way, Lowi is Vodafone's brand, and DIGI is using the Telefónica network, right? So that's what's happening on the market.So what are we doing in this market? We are still focusing on value. That's what we are doing, with basically Orange [ playing on Content ] and with Jazztel. With Orange, we have done Q3, which was even stronger than Q3 last year, both in terms of volumes and also in terms of value mix. And in fact, the market has been less aggressive in the high-end promotions than last year. We had last year something like 50% 12 months in terms of promotions. This quarter, we had 50% 3 months. So basically, the value trend in Orange is positive, same thing in Jazztel. The overall ARPU that we are doing on [ capitation ] in Jazztel is improving year-over-year. What's happening really is the fight in the low-cost segments. As you remember, we only introduced Amena in convergence in the low-cost segments last year. So we are starting to get traction, but we're not yet there. We are playing with Simyo, which has a very big -- strong dynamic. We are also playing with República Móvil. We bought República Móvil last year. Just in a few months, we've doubled the portfolio of customers in República Móvil, and we'll expect to be maintaining growth in this segment.So basically, again, we are focusing on the value. We are giving up a little bit on the volumes, but we are also preparing [ response to the ] low-cost brands. So we will be playing next year with full speed with all our brands. But again, with a focus on value, especially with Orange and Jazztel, and that's what we are trying to achieve.On the MÁSMÓVIL question, which was about the front loading, I'm not sure I understood correctly the question. Can you please repeat the question?

[Roshan Vijay Ranjit, Research Analyst]

Sure. So just trying to get a sense of the wholesale profile, I think, to your previous question. How we should think about the, basically, wholesale revenue profile, given the new terms of the agreement? Also, given the safety clause, which you talk about from the volumes, how -- if you could provide some more details around that.

[Laurent Paillassot, Senior Executive Vice]

Again, as I said, the contribution of MÁSMÓVIL will be slightly increasing year-over-year. And on a cash flow perspective, obviously, this is positive impact, this upfront volume.

[Roshan Vijay Ranjit, Research Analyst]

And then on the safety clause?

[Ramon Fernandez]

Yes. Maybe we'll turn to Fabienne on the question on revenues for full year.

[Fabienne Dulac, Deputy CEO & CEO of Orange France]

Yes. So for the full year, we forecast a flattish top line on the top side, thanks to our strategy, our growth driver on fiber. On the retail side and wholesale, as explained by Jérôme Barré a few minutes ago -- before, convergence and multi-service strategy, so we are comfortable. On Q4, we're accelerating on FTTH, and we will rely on the construction on PIN area and its revenues in the same way. And we -- I think we will have a good trend on retail services. So we are comfortable.

[Operator]

Our next question today comes from Nicolas Cote-Colisson from HSBC.

[Nicolas Cote-Colisson]

Two quick questions, please. You talked about new more-for-more strategy in mobile in the coming weeks in France. Are you talking about Sosh and Orange? And how much of a premium do you think you can hold in France versus your competitors? And my second question is your view on refinancing opportunities in today's low interest rate environment. And how do you think it would impact your view on leverage in the future, but also how it could impact your dividend policy?

[Fabienne Dulac, Deputy CEO & CEO of Orange France]

Yes. On France, as you observed, the market is still very aggressive but we observed an encouraging movement of price from all competitors. And on our part, we are taking advantage of this movement on Sosh and on Orange. On Sosh brand, last week, we increased our promotional price from EUR 10 to EUR 12 on our 20-gigabit plan. And yesterday, we decided to stop our promotional price on 50-gigabit plan. So this is a strategy to sustain and to raise the price. In the same way with a better pricing environment that allow us to pursue this strategy more for more on the back book and on the front book. In the front book, we launched new box 3 weeks ago, and we raised the price at the same time. And in the back book, we maintained our strategy to develop a more for more strategy on a segmented -- with a segmented approach and with a segmented customer base. We recently raised some price on mobile on optimal offer. So this is a strategy we announced a few months ago. We will pursue it currently, and we hope to do the same in the future because I think all competitors are in a better trend in the future, too.

[Ramon Fernandez]

Merci, Fabienne. On your question on refinancing opportunities in the context of low interest rates, well, in fact, we have been quite active on the bond market and the hybrid bond markets since end of August. We issued EUR 2.5 billion end August with different maturities. One of them as long as 30 years in euro with a coupon at 1.37%, which is a record low for any corporate, as far as I know, on euro bond market. So we've been quite active. We also issued in September a hybrid bond in euro for EUR 500 million with a coupon of 1.75%, which is to -- compared to historical figures, much, much higher with year 2014, '15 hybrid bonds. So we've been quite active in 2019. We will have reimbursed EUR 4.3 billion. The levels to be paid in 2020 are much lower. So we've been active. And clearly, this environment of very low interest rates has been supportive, but we -- I think we took good opportunities. There is no link with our dividend policy. We'll come back to this when we will look ahead for the next years in early December. But as I said earlier, we have this floor of EUR 0.70, which is very clear, and there is no change on this fundamental message. For the rest, we will see in December.

[Operator]

Our next question today comes from Mathieu Robilliard from Barclays.

[Mathieu Robilliard, Research Analyst]

First, a question on FTTH in France. You had a very impressive rollout throughout the year and also in Q3 and I was wondering if you were ahead of budget because, from memory, I think you have a target of 20 million households by 2021, but at this pace, you could be ahead of the target. And does it mean that we could see CapEx fall faster from 2020 onwards? Or you may raise your FTTH rollout targets? And the second question was coming back, sorry, again to this question about the growth of France revenues that Fabienne mentioned. Are you talking about full year growth on a comparable basis? Or are you just talking about Q4 growth on a comparable basis for the total French revenues?

[Fabienne Dulac, Deputy CEO & CEO of Orange France]

For the first question, thank you for the "very impressive rollout. " It's a great job made by the team. We are on line with our commitment, and we are on line with the strategy we have. We are on track with the rollout, not in advance, exactly what we were -- what have to be. And there's no impact in the CapEx because we embedded them in 2019 as in 2020. So we are just in time with the right level of the rollout.For your question -- your question, yes, it was about my last answer, I think, yes. I said it's flattish on the positive side for the full year. I think Q4 should be in a better orientation than Q3, exactly what I explained before, rely on -- because we rely on the construction revenues on PIN area and because I think the trend on retail services could be better. I hope it's...

[Mathieu Robilliard, Research Analyst]

So basically, quite a significant improvement in Q4 since you're running at minus 0.8% for the 9 months, right?

[Fabienne Dulac, Deputy CEO & CEO of Orange France]

Yes, yes, yes, I know. I know it's a big challenge.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Jakob Bluestone from Crédit Suisse.

[Jakob Bluestone, Research Analyst]

I'll keep it to one question. Just on Spain, just to sort of understand the retail services performance and outlook a little bit more, can you maybe just sort of help us understand how we should think about the evolution of that business from here? I mean retail service revenues were sort of flat to slightly growing as recently as Q1 and are now shrinking about 5%. There's obviously quite a few moving parts that you described earlier with the shift towards more value. But when I, for example, look at your convergent ARPUs, they're just below EUR 60. And from what you're describing, it sounds like there's sort of more of a move towards the low end. And if I look at the Jazztel pricing, most of them are sort of EUR 60 or below. So should we be expecting a fair bit of further ARPU dilution in that business? And are we a long way away from seeing an inflection or stabilization? Or is there some reason why you think the retail business in Spain can start to recover in terms of growth over the next year or so?

[Laurent Paillassot, Senior Executive Vice]

Okay. Maybe to explain a little bit what's going on in the ARPU, it's been decreasing minus 1%. Basically, if you look at what is explaining that, you have basically the out-of-bundle consumption of data. As you might remember, there's been a lot of more for more in the previous period where we've been doing service upgrades. And we've hit the point where the out-of-bundle data consumption is reducing significantly year-over-year, and that's what is basically hurting the ARPU, which was partially compensated but not totally compensated by the content strategy.As you know also, we've done a service upgrade this Q3 in July of roughly 50% of the base between EUR 2 and EUR 4; and two, we are basically, as I mentioned already, improving the value mix of the [ capitation ] in a significant way with Orange and with Jazztel, which will take time but will translate into the portfolio ARPO as we speak. So our expectation and our ambition is to stabilize the ARPO in the coming months, again, because that's the only way for us to maintain EBITDA growth, and ambition is to maintain low single-digit EBITDA growth for 2019. We will be fighting on volumes, but we will be fighting on volumes with different brands and preserving the value of our main brands, which are Orange and Jazztel. That's really the strategy.

[Jakob Bluestone, Research Analyst]

And I mean, obviously, with 5% declines in revenues, I think Ramon mentioned earlier that your goal is to sort of have margins rising. Is that something that you think -- I mean do you think you can continue to grow EBITDA over the next few years? Or do you think that's a bit of a stretch?

[Laurent Paillassot, Senior Executive Vice]

Well, again, the -- as we mentioned, our ambition is to maintain low single-digit EBITDA growth. We are also working on, obviously, improving all the efficiency of the company. We've launched a lot of initiatives regarding automatization regarding digitalizing customer care. We are reducing the call rates by 30%, driving interaction with IVR, with e-care, with bots. And we are improving a lot of things related to using data in churn reduction, in CapEx allocation, which, in fact, allows us to improve the EBITDA margin year-over-year, and we are still maintaining an improvement for this year. So we are working on both dimensions. And taking also into account that all the agreements that we're doing with Vodafone, now with MÁSMÓVIL, on the rent sharing is also improving our OpEx structure in a significant way, and we are probably on the Spanish market one of the most efficient operator on all the infrastructure elements. So all these elements are for us to maintain and grow and still grow the EBITDA margin level of the company.

[Operator]

We'll go to our next question today from Frederic Boulan from Bank of America.

[Frederic Emile Alfred Boulan, Senior Analyst]

So just a quick follow-up on the previous question around those price adjustments in Spain. So when we look at the moves you did and you do describe, that's actually quite supportive. And so just trying to understand how we reconcile the revenues right now with the moves you've done? And considering the phasing, which was pretty early in Q3, can you explain to us why we're not seeing this and whether we should see some of those pricings starting to impact revenue a bit more strongly in Q4 and H1 2020? Second point is on a slightly different topic we haven't mentioned recently -- on your bank initiative. But I think at the group level, the EBITDA minus CapEx was about EUR 140 million in year-to-date. So if you can share with us the pipeline of new country launches and whether you're happy with the execution and the results so far of that initiative.

[Operator]

Our next question comes Sam McHugh from Exane.

[Ramon Fernandez]

No. I'm afraid we still have to answer to these 2 questions. So maybe, Laurent, first, and I will take the bank questions.

[Laurent Paillassot, Senior Executive Vice]

Okay. So I think -- I guess, the question was on the revenue dynamics, right? My understanding of the question was that. Again, when you look at what's coming -- what's going on, on the revenue side, we are basically losing traction on equipment. This is a general trend in Europe. This is the general trend especially also in Spain, and we have, if I'm correct, 54% of market share in equipment in Spain. So that's normal that we are following the trend, and we are selling higher-priced equipments. And that's basically, if you look Q3 versus Q3, that's EUR 20 million there, and it's not contributing in EBITDA so much. Then we have the impact on retail. And the impact on retail is basically 2 things: one is out-of-bundle, as I mentioned, which is probably 1/3 of the EUR 40 million that we're missing in retail; and we have the rest, which is about churn. And churn is about market competition. It's about not being present for us in low cost. So the out-of-bundle effect will disappear 1 year or another. As a churn, we are fighting one with actions, as I mentioned, using big data and improving all processes as well as playing in the low-cost segments, which is also going to be helping us to maintain volumes and protect our brands. We expect to be able to get back to, I would say, stabilizing and even growing the revenues, but that's going to take a little bit of time. And again, meanwhile, our focus is on preserving the EBITDA.

[Ramon Fernandez]

Laurent, do you want to say a word on the launch of Orange Bank in Spain before I talk about the general picture on our mobile banking activities?

[Laurent Paillassot, Senior Executive Vice]

Yes, sure. We are currently doing a soft launch of Orange Bank in Spain. We already have a few hundred customers. We will be launching in our shops -- owned shops probably by the end of November. And we will be launching globally in Spain in all our shops, not only the owned shops but also the franchises' shops, beginning of this year. So rollout of Orange Bank in total Spain is name of the game for 2020 for us.

[Ramon Fernandez]

Thank you, Laurent. So on the more general question on the pipeline for other countries, first, recall that on Orange Bank in France, which has been launched nearly 2 years ago, it would be the 2-year anniversary next week and we will be able at this time to give some more details about what has been achieved. I gave a figure of the number of bank accounts which has been opened, which is 344,000 accounts. You also have 122,000 credits being distributed. You have this premium card, which has been launched quite successfully. We have now 21,000 premium cards, which are -- have a strong attachment rate for the new accounts being opened. It's 15% to 20% of every new Orange Bank account which comes with this premium card which is payable. It's -- so it's a very good impact. The cash back service that we have been launching in July has been also quite successful. So we are on track with our plan regarding the operations in France. There will be new initiatives. And I'm looking at Fabienne because, of course, it's not a kind of ordinary bank. It is a bank of telecom operator, and you will be seeing in the future more and more illustrations of this very strong link between the bank and the telco. The dedicated [ credit effect ] in France that is being launched now is one of these examples, but you will see more in the future. So in France, we are on track with the plan. And we will have this 2-year anniversary to disclose a bit more informations and perspective there. Now looking at the pipeline in other countries. Well, Spain is really going to be the new country where there will be Orange Bank launch, as Laurent described. You have in Romania something a bit different with Orange Money, which has been launched and which is already quite successful and where our perspective is to see an evolution here in the future. And then we will be assessing what will be the exact timing of future launches in Poland, in Belgium, in Slovakia, in Moldova and Luxembourg with an objective to be active in these countries by 2023. This is the general aim we have. But of course, we will be building on what has been done in France, what is going to be done in Spain. And using the platform that we have and the fact that except in Moldova, we are in the framework of the European banking union with all the regulations which can help us from Paris, from Madrid or from other places to operate through branches in these different countries, adapting to local circumstances.

[Operator]

Apologies. We will now go to our question from Sam McHugh from Exane.

[Samuel McHugh, Analyst of Telecom Operators]

One on Spain, one on France. So on Spain, I think the issue is pretty clear. It's at the low end of the market, which is super competitive. And you mentioned, I think, you're using 5 brands. You also have MÁSMÓVIL as a wholesale customer. Now if I look at the Netherlands, for example, KPN stopped using their discount brand, which I think is leading to a more rational market and also cost savings for them. Do you think that's anything that can actually happen in the Spanish market one day? Or is it just too fragmented from an infrastructure competitive market standpoint to make it more rational? And then on France, I was wondering if you could give a bit of color around your capacity to keep growing fiber net adds. Kind of what do you think is kind of peak run rate that you can get to in terms of fiber net adds? And maybe if you could talk a little bit about where you're seeing fiber growth? Whether that has changed between the dense, semi dense and the PIN areas, that'd be super helpful.

[Ramon Fernandez]

Laurent?

[Laurent Paillassot, Senior Executive Vice]

Yes. So on the brand rationalization, I'm afraid that over the last months, we've seen the opposite happening in Spain. Basically, if you remember, if you just took, I think, 12 to 18 months ago, [ 02 from ] Telefónica did not exist, Vodafone didn't exist. Lowi was not so much important in the [ capitation ] of Vodafone. MÁSMÓVIL has already 5 brands. You have the DIGI of this world. I think just 2 weeks ago, we had 2 new MVNOs created. So basically, the market is, I think, 1/3 of the brands on convergence, and I'm talking about convergence did not exist 12 or 18 months ago. So the movement that you described, I would love that to be happening. It was -- and my understanding was driven by the incumbents in the market. I don't see that happening in Spain. So on all sides, each brand has its own value. We are -- Lycamobile, for instance, is allowing us to capture with alternative channels. Simyo is really digital oriented. We're playing Amena on different channels, telesales, online and all that. So I think for us, as we are -- we have quite a big portfolio of customers with value, it is very important to have very good brands that allow us to protect our existing customers and as well to be playing proactively in the low-cost segments where we were historically less powerful. So we will be growing our market share on the low cost worldwide, preserving their value. That's really what's happening. Rationalization, I don't see it happening at least in the coming few months.

[Fabienne Dulac, Deputy CEO & CEO of Orange France]

So on the fiber, maybe just to remain on the Q3 result because we have a very good performance on the broadband, specifically on the fiber. We booked 178,000 fiber net adds. It was the best third quarter ever recorded, so the dynamic is still very, very well oriented and despite the acceleration of our competitors in every area, this performance is very solid. And maybe a point I would like to highlight, it's 65% of FTTH adds are new customers. So fiber is still for Orange an acquisition tool, and it -- we maintain this performance quarter after quarter.So if we observe the performance per zone, there's no difference. The difference is linked to the rollout and the volume of customers in fiber connectable homes, but there's no difference. On the very dense area for Orange, fiber has been a key success to win back market share, and this is still efficient. On the middle dense area where the battle is now maybe more intense, we maintain our market share and we maintain migration and acquisition. And Orange has a really significant head start regarding the network and the commercial coverage. So I am really comfortable. On the PIN area, this is a very new area. We are progressively offering our services as an internet service provider when we are not the -- we are not owner of the rollout. And our stores -- the proximity with our team in this area will be a key factor of success in the future to recruit customers. So no difference per zone. In each zone, Orange is ready, and we have strong and solid assets -- solid advantage to be tactical in the deployment and tactical on the commercialization strategy.So I am really confident that we can continue to grow in FTTH net add with acquisition and with win back on the market share.

[Operator]

We'll go to our next question now from Giovanni Montalti from UBS.

[Giovanni Montalti]

The Spanish newspaper has recently reported a scenario which [ MÁSMÓVIL ] has done a bid for Voda. Now leaving on the side the specifics, do you see room for consolidation in Spain to materialize in, let's say, the foreseeable future?

[Ramon Fernandez]

Well, I'm going to take this one. This is Ramon. Of course, we're not going to speculate on press news, which, by the way, have been contradicted by those involved. So I don't think we should draw too fast conclusions. We're not going to speculate on these moves. The point we know is that the move we made in 2015 with the acquisition of Jazztel has been incredibly successful. We have, thanks to this acquisition, put Orange Spain on a very strong #2 position with an EBITDA margin rate which is now at 31% compared to below 25% 5 years ago with very strong fiber footprint. We have close to 15 million households -- connectable households, very strong expansion on mobile and really strong position on 4G.And Orange Spain, as very much discussed during this call, it has become a very strong wholesale activity, which is the reason why we also invest in our networks. Wholesale is an important activity for operators such as Orange who invest in networks. Of course, we are a B2C player, we are a B2B player. And here, it's not an issue we discussed for Spain. But obviously, Laurent, under his control, has ambitions also to grow the B2B segment, but wholesale is also important. So Jazztel has been a very strong move, very much value created by this operation. And on a general basis, I would say that Orange as a group is always looking at potential opportunities with a very strong conviction, which is that [ in-market ] consolidation in the telecom sector is the most value-creative M&A you can build. And we will always have this focus, being extremely attentive to different options.

[Giovanni Montalti]

Sorry, if I may, a quick follow-up. Obviously, I mean, I apologize for the misunderstanding. I didn't expect you to comment on the specifics of the deal, obviously. But if I may, do you see the current conditions in Spain as, let's say, sufficiently ripe eventually for a move like that, a consolidation among the national players? And would you see the competitive review as a big hurdle? Or something that can be managed?

[Ramon Fernandez]

I would answer with another general point, which is that Europe is a highly fragmented telecom market. If you look at what's happening in the U.S. or in Asia, you have a size effect, which is making quite often a difference between various players. In Spain, you now have a number of players, including Euskaltel, which is also having plans. So I guess, nobody would be surprised if there would be moves on the Spanish market in the foreseeable future, we will see. But we now have close to 5 players on the Spanish market, which is not necessarily the model to aspire.

[Operator]

Our last question today comes from Emmet Kelly from Morgan Stanley.

[Emmet Bryan Kelly, Head of European Telecoms Research]

I have got two questions, please. The first question is on Orange MEA, on Middle East and Africa. Obviously, the top line growth has accelerated very strongly to 8% year-on-year in Q3. I think you mentioned the kind of thematic drivers of data, Orange Money, fixed broadband. Could you maybe mention which countries that you're seeing the most interesting trends, whether it's Egypt or maybe Côte d’Ivoire?And again, going forward, looking at the EBITDA level, I think you had a great EBITDA number in H1 with EBITDA up 10%. Is this kind of growth sustainable? Or you're maybe putting a little bit more cash to work in your commercial initiatives? And on the second question, just coming back to Orange Spain and the EBITDA trends there. Clearly, the top line under a little bit more pressure. You highlighted some digitalization efforts you're making plus the contribution from wholesale as well. Could you maybe just talk a little bit about the other cost lines there? Are you still getting any synergies, for example, from the old Jazztel deal? What's happening your content costs and what you expect to happen on commercial costs as you try and reenergize your top line as well?

[Ramon Fernandez]

Okay. Thank you. I'll ask Ludovic Pech, who's the CFO of Orange Middle East, Africa, to take your question. And thank you for putting a question on Africa and Middle East because this is becoming an area where we are creating a very significant source of value and growth for the group. Just to recall the figure I gave at the beginning, in terms of revenues, the increase in Q3 in revenues in Africa has been EUR 100 million while the decrease in Spain has been EUR 33 million. So the relative weight of Africa is now more important than Spain at group level, and I think it's worth giving a closer look because this is partly where the future of our profitability will lie. Ludovic?

[Ludovic Pech;Chief Financial Officer;Orange Middle East and Africa]

Yes. Thank you, Ramon. The growth of our footprint is quite general. Putting that in other words, there is not one country necessarily leading that growth. As you will see in the [ caption ] is we disclose both the incumbents like Sonatel, Côte d’Ivoire and Jordan show a solid growth, in particular with the ability to monetize data, but also to grow on our fiber business and mobile finance businesses. Sonatel group is 6.8% growth, Ivory Coast 7.2% and Jordan 2.9%. Then regarding the, I would say, new franchises, I would like to highlight the impressive take off following the successful M&A and [ in ] market consolidation in countries like DRC where we post 20% growth just for Q3. So as you can see that the general growth, general [ how about the ] footprint, quite well balanced between the different geographies. This is a growth both in volumes -- customer volumes, both in mobile and fixed broadband, but also in value. As far as EBITDA is concerned, we continue targeting growth of EBITDA which will be about the growth of revenues.

[Ramon Fernandez]

And so the figure you have seen is not necessarily an exceptional 1-shot figure. The performance is really very good. Laurent, on Spain?

[Laurent Paillassot, Senior Executive Vice]

So the question was on OpEx, right, globally. Well, we will be lowering the indirect OpEx this year. We're working in all the dimensions of OpEx. We have been reducing our footprint -- shop footprint by 12 points while maintaining the number of sales adds. We've been increasing the digital sales by roughly 20 points. So we are acting on most of the levers that we can to still maintain and improve the EBITDA margin. That's what we are doing.

[Ramon Fernandez]

Okay. I think we've reached the end of this call. I would like to thank all of you for your participation. Maybe just a quick word to wrap up this -- what we've seen in this quarter. I would say first that in France, we have here a position which is going to help us to build on all that has been done on the cost base, and we will continue to work on the cost base. It has been the case in the past, and it will continue to be the case. And we have the base to grow in a competitive market but with a market environment which is improving. And I think we had said this at the end of H1. What we have seen in the back-to-school period has confirmed and, in fact, more than confirmed this with some price increases that we've seen in mobile and in fixed. So we are, as Fabienne said, on track to be on the positive flattish revenue full year 2019 track, which is an important element, and the performance is sustained. In Spain, I think it's also important to see that we -- as Laurent has been explaining in many details, we've seen some swings in our commercial performance both on broadband, on mobile, on TV. And we are going to be more active in the low-cost segment where a part of the battle is now going. And Africa is bigger than Spain now in terms of share of revenues and EBITDA and is going to have this weight in the future of our group that you should, I think, overlook. It's fueling EBITDA, it's fueling profitability, and we have here a very strong positive outlook. We didn't talk about the B2B business, but OBS is also into the middle of a significant change of its business model. And it's -- I think it has proved it was going in the right direction with a number of elements that you could see. And we will discuss this also in December, look at the performance you have on IT with cybersecurity, for instance. It's quite impressive. So all in all, we are very much on track to have this growth in EBITDA for the full year, in operating cash flow. And we'll have this opportunity in early December to discuss all these issues, also the infrastructure issue, which we know is very high on your agendas, it is also very high on our own agenda. So looking forward to see you and talk to you, and the IR team is also available to follow up. Thank you, and à bientôt.