Officially, no, SFR is not for sale. But according to an investigation by Figaro, published Sunday, April 6, the telecom operator, number 2 in the market, could soon be shared between Bouygues Telecom, Free, and Orange. According to several sources in the French daily, the sector has been in turmoil since Patrick Drahi, head of Altice France, owner of SFR, is seriously considering selling the company with the red square. And behind the scenes, potential buyers are reportedly keeping a close eye on the deal.
Such a sale would be far from trivial. It would signal a return to three operators sharing the French telecoms market, a market currently occupied by by four players since the arrival of Free (Iliad) in 2012. The news could shake up the sector and have an impact on the price of our subscriptions. It remains to be seen who could buy SFR, a group that has been going through a series of bad times and has lost a million and a half subscribers in the last two years.
A merger with one of the three operators rejected by the competition authorities?
Especially since if the information is confirmed, no operator could, on its own, buy SFR, particularly for competition law reasons. Any merger with one of the three operators in the market (Orange, Bouygues and Free) would create an oversized mega-player that would disproportionately dominate the telecoms sector. It would inevitably be rejected by French and European antitrust authorities, our colleagues explain. The most plausible scenario would be for SFR's assets to be dismantled and resold piece by piece to the highest bidders, which potentially also includes foreign players from Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates.
This is not the first time that Patrick Drahil has floated the idea of a partial or total sale of the operator. Since the rise in interest rates, the group can no longer borrow to repay its previous loans. To reduce its abysmal debt of 60 billion euros, including nearly 24 billion euros in France, the Franco-Israeli billionaire has embarked on a cost-cutting and debt reduction process.
Several disposals have already taken place
Several disposals have already been announced. In 2023, Altice announced that it was selling its data centers to the American bank Morgan Stanley. In March 2024, BFMTV and RMC were sold to Rodolphe Saadé, the billionaire at the helm of the shipping company CMA-CMG. Other sales could allow the group to meet its upcoming debt repayments: SFR must repay €1.6 billion in 2025, €5.4 billion in 2027, and €8.9 billion in 2028.
According to our colleagues, Patrick Drahi hopes to recover €25 billion from the sale of SFR, an amount deemed too high by his competitors. The former darling of the banks, who found an agreement with its creditors last February, could wait until better conditions are met before selling the telecoms operator with 20 million mobile subscribers.
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