Orange reaffirms its strategy and accelerates in its drive to build solid, sustainable value creation for all stakeholders

Press release London, 7 December 2017 2017 Investor Day Orange reaffirms its strategy and accelerates in its drive to build solid, sustainable value creation for all stakeholders As Orange reaches the halfway point in its Essentiels2020 plan, and after having restored growth, the Group is...

London, 07/12/2017 (informazione.it - comunicati stampa - telecomunicazioni)

Press release
London, 7 December 2017

2017 Investor Day

Orange reaffirms its strategy and accelerates in its drive to build solid, sustainable value creation for all stakeholders

As Orange reaches the halfway point in its Essentiels2020 plan, and after having restored growth, the Group is today reaffirming its strategy to differentiate itself through the quality of its networks and customer experience, and has set itself new operational performance objectives. The Group's strategy seeks to leverage targeted investments that aim to reinforce the excellence of its networks and offer enriched services.

The acceleration of the Group's operational performance can be illustrated notably through the fact that the deployment of fibre in France is now ahead of schedule allowing Orange to plan for 20 million FTTH connectable households in high-density and medium-density areas by 2021, rather than 2022. In less-dense areas, covered by public-initiative networks (PIN), Orange now aims to win contracts for the deployment of infrastructure for around 30% of the area. In Spain, Orange will reach 16 million FTTH connectable households in 2020 rather than the 14 million households that were initially planned and that will in fact be achieved as soon as 2018.

For a higher level of customer experience for its "Consumer" customers, Orange will continue to offer the best content on the basis of an aggregator-distributor model, without adding to the inflationary trend in the value of rights. Concerning its Mobile Financial Services activities, following in the footstep of Orange Money, Orange recently launched a disruptive offer in France with Orange Bank.
For its "Enterprise" customers, Orange aims to offer a complete ecosystem of services adapted to the context of digital transformation for which it is positioning itself as a trusted partner.

The strategy in place since 2015 has made it possible to build solid competitive advantages, with renewed growth in both revenues and adjusted EBITDA, a year ahead of the Essentiels2020 plan. These competitive advantages have enabled Orange to return to a particularly solid sales momentum. Combined with an operational efficiency programme, this momentum has enabled the Group to improve its margins and enter a cycle of sustainable value creation.

The operational efficiency plan, Explore 2020, has enabled Orange to improve its cost and investment structure, surpassing the 3 billion euros of gross savings originally forecast for 2015-2018. Orange will continue these efforts over the 2019-2020 period.

Outlook
These factors show a strong dynamic of that enables Orange to set continuously improving objectives:

"Today we are halfway through our Essentiels2020 strategic plan, which gives me an opportunity to take stock of some of the fundamental elements that make up our strategy. Through this plan, we aim to define ourselves by the excellence of our networks and by the innovative and enriched services that we provide our customers, offering them an unmatched customer experience. This strategy is now bearing fruit: we have seen a return to revenue growth a full year ahead of plan, and this momentum, combined with our operational efficiency programme, Explore 2020, has enabled us to renew growth of our adjusted EBITDA and engage us in a cycle of sustainable value creation.

On the basis of these strengths, we intend to capitalize on the success of Essentials2020 in order to accelerate the growth and transformation of the Group as it evolves into a multi-service operator armed with sustainable growth in both our core business and in new activities across every country in which the Group is present."

Glossary

Orange is one of the world's leading telecommunications operators with sales of 40.9 billion euros in 2016 and has 152,000 employees worldwide at 30 September 2017, including 93,000 employees in France. Present in 29 countries, the Group served 269 million customers worldwide as of 30 September 2017, including 208 million mobile customers and 19 million broadband internet customers. Under the Orange Business Services brand, Orange is also one of the world leaders in providing telecommunication services to multinational companies. In March 2015, the Group presented its new strategic plan "Essentiels2020", which put its customer experience at the heart of its strategy so that customers could fully benefit from the digital world and the power of its very high-speed broadband networks.

Orange is listed on Euronext Paris (ORA) and on the New York Stock Exchange (ORAN).
For more information (on the web and on your mobile): www.orange.com, www.orange -business.com or to follow us on Twitter: @presseorange.
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Press contacts: +33 1 44 44 93 93
Tom Wright: tom.wright@orange.com 
Olivier Emberger: olivier.emberger@orange.com