Altice says to halt acquisitions, reduce debt

PARIS: Media and telecoms group Altice, which has seen its share price tumble in recent weeks, will hold off on further acquisitions and instead focus on cutting debt, executives said.

The company has emerged as a major telecoms player in Europe and the United States in recent years with a series of debt-financed acquisitions, but disappointing earnings have renewed concerns about its towering debt.

“We’ll be focused on de-leveraging European assets,” said Altice Group’s chief financial officer, Dennis Okhuijsen, at a conference organised by Morgan Stanley in Barcelona.

“We’ll be very focused on no M and A, going back to the basics, have no expenditure unnecessary for corporate development,” he added.

Altice will even look at the “potential sale of non-core assets, potential tower sales,” added Okhuijsen.

Altice has grown rapidly since it was founded in Luxembourg in 2001, moving into the cable, content production, telecom, media and online video advertising sectors.

We’ll be focused on de-leveraging European assets. Dennis Okhuijsen, Altice Group’s chief financial officer

But the acquisitions, which include France’s second-largest mobile firm SFR in 2014 for 17 billion euros (US$19.8 billion), have been made primarily with debt. Altice spent nearly US$30 billion (25.7 billion euros) in a few months in 2015 to acquire cable operators Suddenlink and Cablevision, making it the fourth-largest US cable operator.

The firm, which posted 23.6 billion euros in sales last year, had debt of 51 billion euros at the end of September.

Altice has been able to make that business model work by aggressively cutting costs and raising revenue at his acquisitions.

But results published on November 2 showed a 1.8 per cent drop in sales in the third quarter to 5.75 billion euros due to reverses in Altice’s main markets in France and the United States, although its operating profit and margin both ticked modestly higher.

The company’s share price has plunged from over 16 euros per share at the beginning of the month to under 9 euros on Tuesday.

Although Altice’s founder Patrick Drahi retook the reins at the firm last week its share price continued to slide.

Drahi, who also spoke at the conference, said the plan to rebrand SFR under the Altice brand will be postponed in order to save funds, without giving a new date.

He also acknowledged that SFR needs to improve its client service if it wants to turn around a decline in customer numbers.

Drahi said there was no objective reason they were leaving SFR, “the only reason is we don’t handle them properly.”

He said the firm needed to pay attention to all the little details that make up customer experience. “We have to make the customer happy to be with us.”

Altice’s shares bounced higher on Wednesday, showing a gain of over 3 per cent in afternoon trading in Amsterdam to 9.19 euros. — AFP