The French mobile industry will not shrink from four to three players without the willingness of Bouygues Telecom, Iliad founder Xavier Niel today told analysts on a conference call.
He also repeated claims that Iliad too would have to be the…
The French mobile industry will not shrink from four to three players without the willingness of Bouygues Telecom, Iliad founder Xavier Niel today told analysts on a conference call.
He also repeated claims that Iliad too would have to be the “motor” in consolidation, since antitrust remedies for any deal between other players would likely include a disposal of assets to the current number four player.
Bouygues chief Martin Bouygues has repeatedly said that he does not want to sell his telecoms business, while Niel has said he does not want to buy Bouygues.
Telecoms experts, many of which are pitching French companies to work on an array of consolidation options, concede that Bouygues “really doesn’t want to sell”, but unanimously agree there is “one player too many”.
“The deal that does make sense is a split of Bouygues, with the network going to Iliad and the services business to Numericable-SFR”, said one expert.
Last year’s three-way consolidation discussion among Orange, Iliad and Bouygues fell apart on price and how best to split Bouygues.
Altice CEO Dexter Goei Numericable-SFR has described the company as the natural buyer of Bouygues.
Announcing FY 2014 revenue of €2.5bn today, Iliad said it now had over 10 million mobile subscribers, or 15% of that market. With net debt of €1.084bn, its leverage ratio stood at 0.84x as of the end of last year, the company said.
Bouygues said it had 11.12 million subscribers at the end of 2014, during which it achieved sales of €4.4m.
