Good morning, and welcome to our full year 2021 e arnings presentation. To begin, I will present the main highlights of the year, and then I will hand over to Ramon, who will give you more details about our financial results. Let's start with our key messages for Q4 2021 on slide four. Our strategic choices are paying off, as Orange remains the undisputed number one FTTH and convergence player in Europe. A leadership position that has been confirmed by our excellent commercial performance in 2021, and that will be further strengthened by the recent acquisition of Telekom Romania and the ongoing process with VOO in Belgium. To better extract value from our first-class infrastructure assets, we have finalized during the fourth quarter the deconsolidation of Orange Concessions and the carve-out of TOTEM, which currently comprises Spanish and French mobile sites.
Our objective for 2022 is to add other countries from our European footprint. Our 2021 financial results are paving the way for our 2023 ambitions, with, excluding the allocation of the tax refund, an EBITDAaL up 0.8% over the year, eCAPEX starting their decrease from H2, and the confirmation of the turnaround in organic cash flow. At Orange, we believe that strong economic performance is not possible without social and environmental leadership. On slide five, we present the main measurable KPIs that we use to monitor our progress towards a more sustainable, inclusive and responsible world by 2025. In 2022, while pursuing our initiatives to foster digital inclusion, we were able to stabilize our level of carbon emissions on scope one and two compared to last year, despite the increase in usage and the easing of sanitary restrictions.
Power purchase agreements in Europe and our solar solutions in MEA will enable us to ramp up our supply of energy from renewable sources under long-term fixed prices. The reduction in our carbon emissions is therefore set to accelerate to secure the achievements of our environmental commitments. In terms of financial achievements, we posted revenues at EUR 42.5 billion, up 0.8% year-on-year, with +0.5% in Q4, driven by a still outstanding MEA, solid other European countries, and positive enterprise offsetting the decline both in Spain, despite a trend improvement, and in France due to co-financing. The slight decrease in Q4 in the group's EBITDAaL resulted in a full year performance of -0.5%, in line with our guidance, or +0.8% excluding the employee shareholding plan.
This result was driven by the double-digit growth in MEA and the good performance of other European countries. EBITDAaL decline significantly improved in H2 in enterprise with the acceleration of our legacy decline and in France due to co-financing. Group eCAPEX decreased by 6.2% in Q4 to reach less than EUR 7.7 billion for the full year, also in line with our guidance. Finally, our organic cash flow 2021 reached EUR 2.4 billion, fully in line with our guidance of more than EUR 2.2 billion. Thanks to these solid results, we are in a position to propose a dividend of EUR 0.70 per share for the year 2021. I will now hand over the floor to Ramon.
Thank you. Thank you, Stéphane. Let's start with group revenues, which increased by 0.8% over 2021 after growing by 0.5% in Q4. MEA was the main contributor to revenue growth with a double-digit increase of 10.6%, followed by Europe, excluding Spain, at +2.6%, and Enterprise at +0.5%. In France, revenues were flat, excluding the impact of co-financing proceeds from the previous year. In terms of activity, retail services kept growing, supported by both convergence at +1.9% and mobile-only services. Fixed-only services declined by 2.8% as well as wholesale revenues down by 6.8%, mainly due to France. Lastly, IT and integration services continued to increase as well as equipment sales, which is almost coming back to its 2019 level.
Turning to EBITDA, we posted a slight decline at 0.7% in Q4, ending the year at 0.5% down, in line with our flat minus guidance. This includes the costs related to the employee shareholding plan for EUR 0.2 billion and the fact that roaming was still far below its pre-pandemic levels. Looking behind the headline figures of each segment, in France, EBITDAaL grew by 1.5% excluding co-financing. Although Spain was down by 9% in H2, this nonetheless represents a significant +7.2 points sequential improvement, resulting in a full year decrease of -12.7%. As you can see, the other European country segment posted a solid +6.6% growth, while MEA again delivered remarkable growth, which puts the full year increase out at an outstanding +16.8%.
The sustained negative effects of the pandemic on corporate clients habits accelerated the decline of enterprise legacy business, impacting its EBITDAaL at -8.3% over the full year. Finally, mobile financial services started its EBITDAaL recovery trend. Let me now give you a brief update on our Scale Up program. We are delivering our commitment to reach EUR 1 billion net cost savings by 2023 out of the indirect cost base of around EUR 14 billion in 2019. At the end of 2021, we delivered more than EUR 300 million cumulated net savings compared to 2019, and we signed a new intergenerational agreement in France for 2022-2024. A key milestone to pave the way of our transformation.
Therefore, even in a challenging context of inflation and high energy cost pressure, we aim to reach cumulated net savings of around EUR 600 million by the end of 2022 compared to 2019. Our net income landed at EUR 0.8 billion, mainly as a result of the impairment that we booked on Orange Spain goodwill in H1, the counter effect of the tax refund received in 2020, and the provision booked in H2 in the context of our new intergenerational agreement. These impacts were partially offset by the impact of the deconsolidation of Orange Concessions. In 2021, organic cash flow reached EUR 2.4 billion, well in line with our guidance of more than EUR 2.2 billion.
Before the allocation of a tax refund, mainly into eCAPEX for EUR 300 million, we reached EUR 2.7 billion organic cash flow this year, thus pursuing the positive trend reversal initiated last year. At the end of 2021, our net debt reached EUR 24.3 billion. This increase of EUR 0.8 billion compared to last year, despite the disposal of a 50% stake in Orange Concessions, is mainly due to the allocation of the tax refund and the spectrum licenses paid. Overall, our net debt over EBITDAaL ratio at 1.91 remains well in line with our guidance. Finally, we kept a strong liquidity position, and we continued to decrease the average cost of our debt. This strong balance sheet is a strong asset we can rely on.
Let's now turn to the business review of the fourth quarter with France, where we achieved an excellent commercial performance. Fiber remains a very strong acquisition tool with 351,000 net adds this quarter, enabling us to reach 1.4 million new fiber customers over the year, with more than 53% of new fiber customers being new customers for the group. At the beginning of 2022, we surpassed the mark of 6 million fiber customers. These figures illustrate the success of our copper to fiber transition strategy, which allows us to maintain our strong market share in both private and rural areas.
On the mobile side, we achieved strong net adds of 132,000 this quarter that were mainly driven by Orange high-end offers as a result of the successful revamping of our offers in October with the lowest level of churn for a Q4 in four years. Despite a typically very competitive Q4, we improved all our ARPU, thanks notably to convergence, which now exceeds EUR 70 after a significant increase of EUR 1.5 year-on-year. Through the year, we have consolidated our strengths with ARCEP acknowledging that we have the best mobile network for the eleventh consecutive year. Moreover, we have extended our lead versus our competitors in terms of Net Promoter Score.
Q4 financial results reflect this strong operational performance with revenues stabilizing, excluding co-financing, thanks to the continued acceleration of retail services revenues, which grew by 4% in Q4, excluding PSTN, a key element for the future. Full-year EBITDAaL is decreasing by 2.9%, but is up 1.5% excluding co-financing and despite a negative impact of around EUR 100 million linked to the employee shareholding plan. As a final point on Orange France, eCAPEX has peaked and is now beginning to decline. Indeed, we have now achieved more than 80% of our 2023 objectives, with 28.8 million FTTH connectable homes at the end of 2021, including more than 16 million deployed on our own.
Let's now turn to Europe, where we increased our mobile contract customer base in Q4 by 58,000 net adds, and our fixed broadband by 34,000 net adds, out of which 88,000 are related to FTTH. With this performance, we closed 2021 growing the customer base in all segments, mobile contracts by 4%, fixed broadband by 15%, and convergence by 8%, including from the fourth quarter. While total revenues in Q4 declined by 1.5% impacted by Spain full-year EBITDAaL at -2.9% underlines the clear trend of improvement in H2, with Europe absorbing the negative effect from Spain to reach a flat performance compared to -5.9% in H1.
Excluding Spain, revenues increased by 0.5% in Q4, delivering full-year growth of 2.6%, while with EBITDAaL growth closing the year at 6.6%, thanks to the great performance in Poland at +5.9% and in Belgium at +9%. In 2021, we have been able to consolidate the six European countries as one of the group growth engines, which we are now reinforcing with the acquisition of TKR in Romania and the ongoing process with VOO in Belgium, paving the way for further developing our convergence strategy. Let's move to Spain. From a commercial point of view, despite slight negative net adds in Q4 for fixed broadband and convergence, both FTTH and mobile contract continued to post positive net adds.
In 2021, our segmented value proposition and focus on customer experience allowed us to reduce churn significantly and to achieve fixed broadband customer base stabilization and growth in convergence, mobile contract, and FTTH in a highly competitive environment. In Q4, we were able to sharply reduce the decline in convergent ARPU, thanks to the price increase on the Orange brand, as well as disciplined promotion policies. In terms of our financial performance in Q4, total revenues at -4% reflect a gradual improvement of 2.6 points in retail service revenues. Wholesale revenues decreased, but without impact on margins, while equipment revenue growth slowed down following the significant catch-up seen in the previous quarters of 2021. Full-year EBITDAaL decreased at a similar rate as in 2020 due to past customer base losses and price repositioning.
Nevertheless, there was a clear turnaround in the trend between H1, which was at -16%, and H2, -9%, as well as on a quarterly basis. The initiatives carried out in 2021, such as our brand portfolio simplification, which will deliver its full impact this year, and the ongoing focus on our transformation, makes us confident in the improving trend expected for 2022, enabling growth in the organic cash flow and our ambition to return to EBITDAaL growth from 2023. Let me now turn to the outstanding performance of Africa and Middle East, which delivered a +9% revenue growth this quarter. This performance was buoyed by double-digit growth in retail services, driven by, firstly, mobile data, thanks to a continued increase in our 4G customer base. Secondly, by the continued robust momentum of fixed broadband with more than 2 million customers.
Regarding Orange Money, we have adapted our commercial strategy to changing market conditions with a limited area of our footprint in a first step by repricing our offers. As a result of this move, Orange Money revenues decreased in Q4, but we managed to grow the active customer base as well as the volume of transactions in all our countries. In terms of profitability, full-year EBITDAaL grew by 17%, and we increased the margin by 2 points, driven by continued strict cost discipline. In the light of these strong results, I confirm all our MEA ambitions in the medium term, including double-digit EBITDAaL growth and even faster organic cash flow growth. Let's now look at the enterprise segment. Revenues were up by 0.7% in Q4 and 0.5% for the full year, which is still impacted by the pandemic.
This revenue stabilization was achieved thanks to the growth in IT and IS and in mobile, which offset the ongoing decline in fixed services. As we mentioned previously, the decrease is mainly explained by the change in usage of voice services, which accelerated during the pandemic. The growth in our IT and integration businesses is still solid despite being impacted by the ongoing chipset shortage, which delayed the completion of certain projects. EBITDAaL was at -8.3% in 2021 as a result of a decline in our high-margin legacy business and also the impact of the employee shareholding plan. Overall, Enterprise is accelerating its revenue transition from a network to a digital services company. IT and IS revenues now represent more than 41% of OBS revenues, up two points compared to the previous year.
The acceleration of this transition from high-margin legacy business to dynamic growth engines will delay our EBITDAaL turnaround, with 2022 still expected to be down low single- digits. The new OBS CEO roadmap will be to return to growth from 2023. Let's now move to mobile financial services, which as a reminder, comprises both Orange Bank in Europe and Orange Bank in Africa, but not Orange Money business, which is reported under the MEA segment as seen previously. The EBITDAaL recovery path to break even is now gathering pace, with an improvement of EUR 34 million in 2021. Growth in the net banking income, up +57% in 2021, was instrumental to this improvement.
This achievement was notably driven by the growth both in volume and value of our customer base, 1.7 million in Europe and 0.7 million in Africa, which was launched only 18 months ago. In France, nearly all our new customers enter through paid offers, which is a key differentiator of our strategy. We are also very proud that in France, Orange Bank has become one of the most well-known brands in the sector and has been recognized as offering the best banking app. This concludes the business review of this fourth quarter. Let me now hand over to Stéphane to conclude this presentation.
Thank you, Ramon. Let's have now a look at our guidance. During the past years, we have paved the way to reach the ambitions of our strategic plan, Engage 2025. Therefore, 2022 would represent a significant move towards our 2023 goals as we aim at reaching the following targets. EBITDAaL will step up and grow 2.5%-3%. eCAPEX will decrease and reach not more than EUR 7.4 billion, excluding the effect of the ongoing acquisition project in Belgium. Organic cash flow will increase to at least EUR 2.9 billion. Our target net debt to EBITDAaL ratio remains unchanged at around 2x in the medium term. Finally, regarding the 2022 dividends, we will propose to maintain EUR 0.70, of which EUR 0.30 as interim dividends in December 2022.
Before opening the floor to questions, I'd like to reiterate all our guidance for 2023, including our organic cash flow target. Since 2019, we managed to grow our organic cash flow fully in line with our guidance. After another step up in 2022, organic cash flow will reach between EUR 3.5 billion- EUR 4 billion in 2023, supported by both EBITDAaL increase, fueled by the EUR 1 billion cost savings program, and eCAPEX decrease initiated in H2 2021. Let me remind you that organic cash flow now accounts for 50% of the group's management's long-term incentive plan. Let's now open the floor to questions.
After the call, if you find that your question has already been answered, you may remove yourself from the queue by pressing star two. Again, please press star one to ask a question, and we will take our first question from Roshan Ranjit in Deutsche Bank.
Good morning, everyone. Thanks for the questions. Two for me, please. Firstly, in France, retail were another very strong performance. You had previously guided this CAGR range 2%-4%. We're now at ex-PSTN. We're now at the top end of the range. I think maybe a year earlier than anticipated. Now where, given the pricing environment now being still very good, where do you think that could go to through 2022, please? Secondly, in Spain, last year, you reinforced some of your wholesale agreements, and you mentioned strengthening some of the break clauses.
Is it possible to get some details around that, as to any of the kind of potential step downs or any of the exit fees that may be incurred, if there were a change in the wholesale environment there? Thank you.
All right. Maybe regarding the price environment in France, first, you were right to underline the amazing performance of French retail services in 2021. Thank you for that. Regarding the prospects for 2022, I'll ask Fabienne to provide answers. No. It's okay.
Okay.
No.
Do you hear me? Yes. Thank you for the question. Yes, you are. We achieve a very strong performance in 2021, and we are really confident for 2022 because the bedrock we have are very solid. During the 2021 year, we took different decisions. First of all, if you remember, we launched a few back book repricing to sustain the acceleration of the revenue for back book repricing. In October, we launched a mobile range redesign of our and it was so very successful, both on volume and on value, as reflected on the ARPU. In 2022, we are very confident that fiber will be still very dynamic as in 2021. The 5G will have a positive turn.
In 2021, all customers equip themselves. 75% of the handset sales are 5G compatible. 25% of our customer base is on 5G offer and device. We have a solid bedrock, and we have some opportunity in 2022 to be very confident in our revenue guidance for the future.
Thank you, Fabienne. I'll ask Jean-François Fallacher, who is with us from Madrid, to take the second question. Jean-François.
Yes, hello, everyone. I'm speaking from Madrid concerning wholesale. There are two things I can say about the year 2021. First of all, we have been extremely focused, and I would say rather tough building a relation with our wholesale partners, meaning no decrease in tariffs whatsoever. No new MVNOs have been awarded this year. Obviously, we want to make sure that the wholesale market is not shifting more towards more competition on the retail. That's the first, I would say, posture that we have been having in 2021. If you remember well, there was indeed a very important topic concerning wholesale in 2021. As you remember well, MÁSMÓVIL has been acquiring Euskaltel. MÁSMÓVIL and Euskaltel were our most important wholesale contracts.
Obviously we have in the second and the third and fourth quarter renegotiated the Euskaltel wholesale contract with MÁSMÓVIL, which finalized this negotiation at the end of last year. I think in a very balanced conditions for both parties, ourselves and MÁSMÓVIL. This renegotiation is actually allowing us to see, I would say, as concerns the wholesale business of Orange Spain, the future positively. That renegotiation will allow us to stick to the plan that we have committed towards the market.
Thank you, Jean-François. Next question.
Akhil Dattani in JPMorgan .
Yeah. Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. Can I start with the first one just on your free cash flow outlook and obviously the reiteration of your 2023 targets? I guess one of the things investors will be focused on is the fact that now if we take your cash flow guidance and deduct all the below items, your dividend is now covered, and obviously into next year will be very well covered with some decent headroom. I guess I'm just keen to understand how you think about balance sheet priorities going forward in terms of, I guess, the alternatives we might want to think about, whether it's investing in the business more aggressively, whether it might be more generous, shareholder return policies.
You know, generally, what are your high-level thoughts around the prioritization of your clearly much improved cash flow headroom? That's the first question. The second one is, if you could just give some update on the progress on the tower side, and I guess specifically, what I'm interested in is that as you're thinking about a potential industrial transaction in that space, to what extent does the volatility we've seen in markets on these highly rated stocks impact your decision making? Clearly, European tower stocks have traded down quite hard recently. You know, does that make moving forward with any sort of deal much harder? Thanks a lot.
Thanks for your question. Maybe, Ramon, you can start with the first question. Me, I'll add some comments.
Okay. Thanks for the question. On the cash flow, the first very important point as you have seen is that we are very well on track with our organic cash flow target. We are delivering in 2021 slightly more than what we had promised, which was above EUR 2.2 billion, which generally is seen as, you know, EUR 2.3 billion. Well, it's EUR 2.4 billion. In 2022, we have at least EUR 2.9 billion.
Which is very well on track with the minimum EUR 3.5 billion organic cash flow target for 2023. When you look at the different metrics, looking at the growth engines for EBITDAaL and the CapEx decrease, which is starting in 2022, we are very confident that we will be able to reach these targets. I think this is probably the most important thing to note in a context where I guess some of you were not totally convinced we would be able to to deliver this. We will. Now, you should not forget that below organic cash flow, you have also to pay for your spectrum licenses when you look at the free cash flow.
2022 will be a year where you will have a number of 5G auctions in a number of countries. This will be of course taken into account. We have a very strong balance sheet. As you know, you know, this ratio of 2 is here to stay very, very solid. The liquidity position of the group is very strong. We will keep within these metrics and that's what I can say to your question, a very solid performance indeed.
If I can add a few words on that. Of course, I don't want to talk about what will be the future choices of the company regarding the allocation of its resources and cash resources. Obviously, I think we can say that we are now at the peak of our eCAPEX cycle. You can see that we have started declining the global eCAPEX effort of the group. Because we have started fiber before anybody else in Europe, and we have done this stronger than anybody else in Europe.
I think this is really a major advantage and asset of this company, but it means that it clears the future in terms of, let's say, organic eCAPEX. I don't expect to answer your question that we will have to allocate our additional cash resources into organic eCAPEX because of that history. I think that we will have some opportunities to strengthen our positions, especially in Europe, playing clearly the in-market consolidation opportunities when we have, like Spain today or maybe one day in another European country. Then obviously I think that we have all the conditions gathered to prepare a better return to our shareholders. As you know, at Orange, the preferred tool to return value to our shareholders is dividend for many reasons.
Yes, I think that what we are doing now and this organic cash flow performance in 2021, in 2022 and 2023 will clearly fuel better returns to our shareholders. The number one tool to do that will be the dividend. Regarding your second question, towers. Well, I just want to remind first that it was very important for Orange, and I think it's now a clear asset in the current game to create TOTEM. Now TOTEM is fully operational. TOTEM has been designed according to the best available standards. You know, this is the interest of doing that maybe later than the others. I think we have really taking the best experience and the best design that we have found in the market.
TOTEM is now a reality, an operational reality, is working very well. We are going to expand the footprint of TOTEM, as I mentioned earlier, by bringing sites from other European operations of Orange. Now what are we going to do with TOTEM? First, TOTEM has been created to extract value out of those assets for us. We are now managing our mobile sites in those countries in a different way than in the past. This will bring some additional value for the company and for its shareholders on a standalone basis, I would say. Then TOTEM is an additional card in our game.
We can use TOTEM to create value out of expanding the footprint of TOTEM by maybe buying some assets, by combining with other TowerCos. There is, as you know, also a possible or maybe an opportunity of creating a larger European TowerCo, if we join TOTEM with one of the other operators, TowerCos that now exist in Europe. We have plenty of options, in fact, and this is the good news. You know, I think that TOTEM is really in the middle of this game because in fact, if you look at the situation, you will see that all the possible combinations in Europe suppose that TOTEM is part of that. I think that we are in a really nice and critical position.
We have plenty of options, and then, of course, we'll have to choose according to opportunities. I do think that TOTEM will be one of the major levers to create additional value for our shareholders in the future. Next question.
Thank you. Next question is from Thomas Coudry in Bryan, Garnier & Co.
Yes, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I have a few, please. First ones would be on the mobile money and banking services. As far as Orange Bank is concerned, can you confirm us the future opening of new countries in Africa where you developed the bank? Overall, you confirm that you still aim to reach EBITDA breakeven by 2024, or these new openings could weigh on this trajectory. Still on the mobile money questions, can you please update us on your plan to offset the impact of Wave in Africa? We've seen that your mobile money revenues in Africa are down this quarter.
Still the revenues are good. I mean, the trend is good at the Africa level. What is your plan to offset this impact? My last question, please, would be more directly for you, Stéphane Richard. We know that you're going to leave the floor to Christel Heydemann in a few weeks from now. If you had maybe just two advices, I might say to give her, one on something that you're very proud in your track record and you wish that she's careful in, let's say, not damaging, pursuing, what would it be?
The other advice of something that maybe you could have done better and you would hope that she would do better than you and she needs to improve, what could it be? Thank you very much.
Thanks. First question, Paul, please.
Thank you, Stéphane. Thank you, Thomas . First question regarding Orange Bank. Just to avoid any misunderstanding, you have two Orange Banks. One Orange Bank is in Europe, second one is Orange Bank Africa, which is in Africa. Which means that, yes, we have some plans to open some new branches of Orange Bank Africa, which is so far only in the Ivory Coast. We have some plan to open in Senegal, but we're still waiting for the agreement of the central bank. These openings in Africa will have no impact on the breakeven that we aim to reach in Europe as it is another company. Just to avoid any misunderstanding between the two. The second question was on Orange Money.
No, no. Aliouné? Huh? Aliouné?
Yes.
On the recovery path to, huh?
Oh, on the recovery path of Orange Bank?
That's the question.
If I exclude the African part of your question on Orange Bank, yes, we posted, as said by Ramon, a very positive result for Orange Bank in Europe as our net banking income is growing by 57% in 2021, which allowed us to reduce our EBITDA losses by EUR 34 million, which is good news. Our customer base has reached 1.7 million customers in Europe, and now we're on a clear path to reach breakeven as planned, both by developing our revenues and due to payment fees and consumer lending. Just to give you a figure, last year we originated more than EUR 1 billion of lending, mainly consumer lending, a little bit of mortgage, which is very hard for neobanks.
Most neobanks do rely only on payment activities. We rely both on payment and consumer lending. That's one first step to reach breakeven. The second one is that we will still further reduce our cost base. Since 2018, we have reduced our cost base in France for Orange Bank by EUR 50 million. Both this revenue development plan and cost base reduction make us confident to reach breakeven, as planned.
Thank you, Paul. I move to Aliouné for the Wave strategy, or let's say the Orange Money strategy against Wave. Aliouné.
Hi, everyone. Thank you, Stéphane. Thank you. First of all, I'd like to mention the Orange Money revenues represent 10% of the retail revenues, less than 10% of retail. As you mentioned, of course, we have been disrupted by Wave, this model that provides the basic services for free, namely the cash out revenue. We have launched a very massive and rapid response to this disruption. As you mentioned, the revenue dropped by -18% in Q4 after an increase of 20% in H1. For the time being, Wave is operating in only four countries out of our 18 countries. It represent roughly 60% of our revenues.
In the other countries where Wave is not present, where it's not operating, the revenues are growing by more than 35%. This is to say that the potential is still here in the countries, and the response we have made to the disruption of Wave is based on mainly three axes. The first one is the repricing of our offers, let's say to appropriate the same business model. The second one is to accelerate digitalization for our customers and for the distributors also. Also, let's say make a rebranding of Orange Money, of the brand, which seems to be important for the customers, at least in the four countries where Wave operates.
The first result of this response are actually very positive because in December, we have a growth of the global transaction of + 10%. That means that we have. We are sacrificing some of the value, of course, because we need to align with the prices of Wave. But it means also that the volume of transaction have reached the highest level ever, which is EUR 4.9 billion in December. That means that in the long-term run, the potential is here. We will sacrifice some value, but we'll come back, I think, to maybe a higher EBITDAaL in the future, after the price war, of course, with these players. The reason is.
The reason why EBITDAaL could be higher is that the more money you have. With this new business model, the more money you have every time, the more cash in you have, the more transaction you have, the less cash out you have. The cost of distribution will decrease in the coming years. This is the response we have given to Wave. On the other hand, as I mentioned earlier, it represent only 10% of our revenue, and we have 80% of our revenues coming from retail services from data and from fixed broadband. You know, data, mobile data is growing by 25%. Fixed broadband is growing by more than 30%.
This is more than what we need to offset the revenues we lose with Orange Money in Q4 and for the coming year.
Thank you, Aliouné.
Thank you for your question.
Thank you, Aliouné. Well, regarding your the last part of your question, difficult to answer. I would say first that I am sincerely happy to have Christel on board. I spend a lot of time with her, myself and the team, in order to prepare her to take the job beginning of April in the best possible conditions. This is my first message. I want you to know and to understand that we are working really in this transitional period very closely and very narrowly with her, and we associate her as soon as now in order really to make her in the best possible condition when she will take the job.
Meaning also that you will not have a sort of in between, you know, a period. I think she will be really fully operational beginning of April. Christel is, I think, will be a very good CEO, and in the same time, and it's my way to answer your question, I do think that she's very lucky. She's very lucky because she's going to be the CEO of the best European telco today. This is really what I think, and I want to illustrate this very quickly with six points. My first point is that, Orange is today in Europe, the telco that has started to move towards fiber earlier and stronger than anybody else.
Today, I think if you compare Orange with anybody else in Europe, we have an unbeatable advantage in the current state because we made this choice 10 years ago. This is a very strong asset, of course, that Christel will have with her. The second point is that I do think that we have the best brand, the best global brand with the largest footprint, and this is a very strong asset for us. The third point is, I think we have the best balance sheet. This is the result of a serious disciplined management of our resources, of our balance sheet in the past 10 years. Of course, because we have the best balance sheet of the industry in Europe, it means that also we have the largest flexibility and margins to prepare the future.
My fourth point is that I think we have the best growth engines of the industry in Europe today, and I will simply mention three of them. The first is Africa and the Middle East, obviously. I think we still have long years of growth and of profitability and of value creation in Africa and the Middle East. My second illustration will be our mobile financial business with the bank. And despite the current challenge that we have in Africa regarding mobile banking in Africa. My third example will be cybersecurity. We have really created something from scratch five years ago. It's now a business unit which is producing nearly EUR 1 billion revenues. Look at also the valuation of this business.
I think we have really a growth engine for the future, which is once again unbeatable if you look at the telco scene. My number five is that I do think that we are ready socially, and I would say culturally, to accelerate our transformation in this group, and especially in our French operations. We have made, I think, a lot of change and a lot of transformation in the past 10 years. Never forget that the situation of this company when I joined the company 12 years ago was very difficult, was very challenging and any, I would say, transformation idea was not really anymore possible.
We had to really restore a collective mindset, a collective capacity of coping with the challenges of the future in this company. It took time. I think that now we have, from a social and once again, cultural point of view, we're in a situation where this transformation is now ready to be accelerated. Number six, we are a critical player in a number of consolidation games. We have talked about towers. Can you imagine a significant combination now in Europe around towers without Orange? If you are thinking about Spain, you see that once again, in Spain, we are a critical player in a game, an ongoing game that will hopefully result in market consolidation.
Maybe my number seven, more financial. I think that we are in the best timing over the past 12 years, in terms of producing additional value for our shareholders, producing organic cash flow, meaning producing more resources. You know, in the past 10 years, we had to cope with the arrival of Free in France with a number of challenges, big challenges, with also the impact of the transition from copper to fiber, which is also in the future. I do think that we are in a better state than ever, at least since I'm here, to see our financial prospects and our capacity to extract more value and more organic cash flow out of our operations, which is clearly a very good news for Christel.
It's also, I think, a very good news for our shareholders and for our employees. I will end with two things. If I have maybe a major, I would say, regret in the past, well, 10 years, it's undoubtedly the French in-market consolidation that we missed. To be honest, I don't think that I am the main person responsible of this failure, because really, I tried very hard to reach it. We were in 2016. I think the minds were ready to go into this in-market consolidation in France. This would have changed very much the visage of the company, including the financial aspect of the company.
I think that would have been a different story also for our shareholders, but we missed it. I hope that we will have a new opportunity if not to participate into consolidation, but at least to benefit from an in-market consolidation in France. Even though I am quite confident in our capacity to resist and to still perform in a four-player market in France. Maybe my last point in terms of recommendation, I don't know, but just idea to keep in mind. I think that it is likely to see one day in the future. I don't know when, I don't know even if this will happen, but I think it is a likely event. We will see one day a change in the shareholdership structure of the company.
Because this, the state, the French state, which is still our reference shareholder cannot be seen as a long-term, I would say eternal shareholder of the company. We all know that there will come a day when the state will sell partially, totally, I don't know. I think that one of the big goals of Christel will be to prepare the company in the best possible way to manage this day, because this day will be a big change for us, culturally, especially in France, but also clearly in that will open plenty of opportunities also of new opportunities, the day it happens. This is in a nutshell.
Sorry to be a little long, what I can provide as answers to your question, and thank you for your question. Next one.
Next question is from Mathieu Robilliard in Barclays.
Yes, good morning. First I wanted to thank you, Stéphane, for your dialogue with the markets over the years and give you my best wishes for the future. I had two questions, please. First, on guidance. You're guiding for quite a turnaround in the EBITDA trajectory in 2022, and so it would be helpful if you could give some granularity on the tailwinds in 2022 versus 2021. I want to confirm that this guidance is organic, that it excludes the changes in the perimeter, specifically the positive impact of VOO and the Romanian acquisition. So that's the first question. The second question, we're all seeing a renewed desire to consolidate telecom markets in Europe. Stéphane, you've mentioned that a few times during this call.
What is very unclear, at least for me, is whether the EC has changed its view on the topic because the EC has been the key barrier to a market structure improvement. Maybe if you could share your views on how maybe things have changed from a regulatory authorities point of view, that would be very helpful. Thank you.
Ramon for the first.
Okay. Thank you, Mathieu. On EBITDA, the 2.5%-3% growth, some granularity here. If you look at the big blocks, you have Africa, Middle East, where growth was 17% of EBITDAaL in 2021. We're not going to deliver 17% every year, of course, but we are aiming at a regular double-digit growth. Even if you take a very conservative approach of double- digit, and you heard Aliouné very optimistic, and we are all very positive about this. Even if it was only 10%, you are starting from a EUR 2.3 billion EBITDAaL basis. Just with Africa, you are adding at the minimum around EUR 230 million-EUR 250 million.
It could be also slightly more if we're able to reproduce part of the very strong performance of 2021. This is one big block. If you look at Europe as a whole, you will have still significant growth of the so-called six European countries, and you saw 6.6% growth in 2021 for these countries. This is going to continue. Spain is on a regular trend of improvement. You've seen that H2 was roughly two times better than H1. You can expect that 2022 would be twice better, if I may say so, as 2021. The drag of Spain is going to be much less important. Overall, you can expect Europe to be I would say flat positive, let's say, you know, flat positive.
OBS, we talked about it for 2021, we had -8%. It's gonna be much less, slight decrease in 2022. The drag will be much less important. You will have in France a strong resilience. There is still pressure, we all know from co-financing, etc. If you exclude co-financing, you can expect to be around zero. Overall, this is going to support the performance of EBITDAaL, without forgetting that the intergenerational agreement that we signed in December and which is starting in 2022 is also going to contribute to labor cost reduction all in all in 2022, and it will be going on for the next years.
This is, you know, supporting strongly the at the minimum 2.5% increase because you just need to deliver around EUR 300 million growth in EBITDAaL to reach this bar. This is the first part of your question. In terms of is it organic or not, we said, and Stéphane said in wrapping up, for the guidance that this is the only caveat on the guidance is regarding CapEx, looking at the potential acquisition of VOO, because obviously, since we gave an absolute figure, if we deliver the VOO acquisition, you will have some CapEx coming with VOO. It's not a big figure at all. For me, it's all included roughly.
Of course, if you have acquisitions in new countries, when you say, you know, maximum EUR 7.4 billion, if you have a EUR 50 million or EUR 100 million of CapEx in Belgium, in VOO that you deliver, well then, of course, you can have a minor move from this. To me, it's really not significant. It's really, I would say an all-included guidance you have is extremely solid. It's extremely solid both on EBITDAaL growth and I would repeat, on the organic cash flow growth, which is really the essential metric we have. I'm extremely confident of the at least EUR 2.9 billion. You've seen the result of 2021. We did better than expected, and we have this dynamic in mind.
Thank you, Ramon. Well, regarding your second question about EC policy, the antitrust policy. First, I try to be honest and not to do wishful thinking, because, you know, in that matter, this can be a risk. Well, obviously there is no change in the framework of antitrust policy in EC. There is no change in the treaty. Basically, we are, you know, in a domain where it is the sovereign appreciation of the services in Brussels and of the commissioner that will then produce a decision or an inflection in this policy. We can only rely on the feeling that we have in the exchanges that we have with the people in Brussels.
In fact, I think that the main problem for us in the industry is what I would call the self-censorship in that domain, you know. Because the problem is that if you don't submit a project in Brussels, you don't know if there is a change or not. There is, you know, this sort of dance between the industry and Brussels, when Brussels is, of course, in charge of antitrust scrutiny, which is something which is quite delicate, because there are some fear of clearly. My view on that is that there are opportunities. I am pretty convinced that there are opportunities of stepping in-market consolidation in a number of countries, especially because, you know, it's a matter of cycles.
We had some in-market consolidation operations in Spain, in Italy, U.K., in Germany, four or five years ago with remedies. The remedies, in fact, created a new, I mean, let's say a new set of players in the market, like Iliad in Italy or MÁSMÓVIL in Spain. I think we are ready for a new cycle of in-market consolidation that will, of course, be reviewed in Brussels, when it is Brussels, with a different analysis than what it was five or four years ago, because we have today players that didn't exist at that time. You know, we have mavericks. We are in a number of European countries in markets with four or even five or six players.
Meaning that for that structural reason, I think more than anything else, that change in political mindset in Brussels, I think that we will see some new game and some new opportunities in market consolidation just because the industry has, I would say, restarted its fragmentation in the past two or three years. That, of course, paves the way for future in-market consolidation. I'm quite. I would not say optimistic, but ready for sure to go to Brussels with good in-market consolidation projects. Of course, taking into account what will be the likely analysis of the services about remedies.
There's some space to value creative in-market consolidation in a number of countries in Europe, despite the fact that the framework, the regulatory framework has not really changed in Brussels. This would be roughly my answer. Let's do it. Let's try it.
Great. Thank you, Stéphane. Ramon, maybe if I could follow up on the guidance. It wasn't entirely clear to me if the EBITDA growth guidance includes the positive impact of VOO and Romania or not. I understand on the CapEx, that's very clear, but on the EBITDA, I wasn't entirely sure. Thank you.
No, Romania is done because TKR has been integrated in Q4. VOO is not yet in the books.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. Next question is from Jakob Bluestone on Credit Suisse.
Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking the question. First of all, if I can also say thank you to Stéphane for the last 10+ years, and best wishes for the future as well. I had two questions, please. Firstly, just on Spanish consolidation, which you obviously just gave some very useful thoughts around, the sort of position of Brussels. I'd just be interested in just sort of diving a little bit deeper. There's obviously been a lot of press reports about a lot of different combinations in Spain, some involving you, some not involving you. I'd just be interested in hearing, if consolidation did not involve you and as a result, you stood to lose some wholesale revenue, would you still see consolidation as a positive from an Orange Spain point of view?
That's the first question. Just secondly, your guidance for next year, obviously, it implies healthy EBITDA growth. I was just wondering, can you make a comment around inflation and particularly labor inflation? What are your expectations for that? What's embedded in the guidance? Thank you.
Well, maybe I will take the first question, but of course, Ramon or Jean-François, please, you can add any comments if you wish. Well, the first point is that as I think you have understood, we are actively working on being involved in the possible in-market consolidation in Spain. We are not passive. We are not waiting for things to happen. We are actively involved. Number two, if this consolidation is reached through a combination which excludes, sorry, Orange, what would be the consequence? Well, the short or to mid-term first consequence would be probably a challenge in wholesale revenues. I just said probably, because this is not mechanical, this is not automatic.
You know, we have first contracts, rather detailed contracts, and then there are also industrial aspect or marketing aspects. This is not something which is so obvious and so mechanical. The second point is that my belief is that in any in-market consolidation situation, everyone at the end of the day benefits from such in-market consolidation. There will be a benefit for everyone in terms of efficiency. I am not talking about market repair, of course.
If you look at the past, you will see that even without any price, you know, impact, when we move from five to four or to five to three, it means better returns and better margins for the remaining players. In any case, I think in-market consolidation, even though we are not part of that, will open new opportunities for us. Maybe that would be a challenge because we will have to reinvent even more than today. I do think that it will mean also opportunities. My last point is that, you know, it can be nice to trigger in-market consolidation, being involved and a part of the game. This is clearly what we want to do.
The price to pay is to manage a one-year or a 1.5-year antitrust process in Brussels with uncertainty, with negotiation, with a lot of management focus and time for that. If you are not part, you know, of the game, you save this time, and this burden is on other shoulders. That's why basically, even though I still think that our priority should be to try to be part of the consolidation game, I don't think that this will be the worst possible news to see in-market consolidation in Spain outside ourselves.
Thank you. Just to say I fully agree with Stéphane, of course. I think we all know there are too many players in Spain. I think there is a you know a very wide view and I would add that we are actively you know watching and participating to making the best possible picture with value creation in mind. Very focused. On the question on inflation, Jakob, and EBITDAaL, first on and I'm going to answer this, but let's all keep in mind that when you look at the engines for growth, for EBITDAaL, I addressed some of them. You have also cost discipline with the Scale Up program, which is extremely important.
We are mobilizing everybody in the company, you know, on this, which is, you know, cost efficiency programs. There is just no alternative. We are making good progress where you could see the figure and CapEx discipline leading to the OCF target. Just to make it very clear. On inflation, which is clearly a challenge for all of us, I would say, maybe three things. The first one is that you were talking, I think, more about labor costs, but energy cost is clearly an issue everywhere. Energy cost is around 2% of our total OpEx. We have covered 85% of our energy costs in 2022. We did prepare ourselves for this situation.
In the perspective we give for 2022, we have booked the impact of what's happening on the energy front. This is first thing. Second, on labor costs. Well, situations are different in different countries. What I can say is that when we come to you with a guidance for 2022, we are watching what's happening around, so we took some assumptions here. But clearly, we're not at the same point in different countries. One of the important discussions is still ahead of us in France. So we'll see. We will have this discussion. But we are aware that there is this context.
When you talk about inflation, of course, a key question, and we are discussing it quite often within the team and with Stéphane, is what is our own capacity to adjust our own prices? Because it would be a bit strange if prices would increase everywhere except in the services we do provide. Fabienne was earlier talking about what Orange France could do, for instance, in 2021 with four back book price increases, which addressed one third of the total mobile customer base. We have a capacity also, and I'm not talking about what happened in Poland, in Belgium, et cetera. This will be part of the equation also, which is our own capacity to give a price.
We have shown that we were able to do so in the past, so we will need to continue to go in this direction.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. Next question is from Stéphane Beyazian in ODDO.
Yes, thank you very much. Can I ask, sorry, a question on fiber, which I think is one of the largest project that you manage at Orange and hopefully will be in place for the decades to come. On some of the moving parts, perhaps starting with one negative and a couple of positives. The negative is there any sort of risk of extra investments from possible malfunctions in the rollout by suppliers? They're under pressure to roll out so fast fiber that it's quite possible there are some issues in some regions in France.
Regarding the positives, is there, you know, anything you can say and guide us regarding, you know, the increase in the copper unbundling fees, the shutdown of the copper networks? Finally, you know, how much of capital expenditures over the next couple of years should move away from your current level as you terminate the build-out of fiber? Thank you.
Thank you, Stéphane. Maybe I'll ask Fabienne and maybe Jérôme to develop answers on those fibers, copper to fiber questions.
Yes. Maybe I can start. Thank you for your question. On fiber, yes, we observe some malfunction in the network in France. You're right. We observe in France some malfunction in the network and specifically in the fiber. I would like to recall that it's normal because there is an acceleration due to the appetite for fiber, though there's nothing worried about this point. The volume of malfunction regarding all the activity we have on the French network, mobile, fixed, copper, fiber, is very small. We have to be very cautious about that.
There's no, as the media seems to write, a big issue in France. We have no risk of extra investment from malfunction. We are working on this point inside Orange with all competitors to be better, even if there is an acceleration. I am not worried about this point. The second question was about the shutdown of copper network. Maybe I can start, and you will follow. Yes. We announced two weeks ago the plan we decide to organize the shutdown of copper network. First of all, I want to recall that this is an industrial and customer program. Industrial because we have to shut down and stop the copper. Customer before because we have to migrate customer from copper to fiber.
We are very confident that this program will take time, and it's why we repeat day after day that it will be a progressive program, and Orange will manage it with one.
Big question: what is the value for Orange and how we can generate value day after day, until the end of the copper? This is a question we have with the whole. It's why we are very cautious about this, and we will be in the future because we don't want to have. We want to manage the impact, and we want to generate the value until the end of the copper.
Thanks, Fabienne, and good morning to everybody. First, I'd like to the question has been being asked, but I'd like to just confirm the guidance we have given in July about our target concerning impact of EBITDA of wholesale in France. For me, it's clear. We announced this decrease of EUR 500 million in EBITDA, and we are fully confident in with this target. I mention that because the fiber is part of the game, and we have a very solid and robust business model on fiber on wholesale fiber in France. Back to the second question. Fabienne mentioned the decommissioning plan of the copper, and a part of the question is the increase of the unbundling tariff.
We're clearly asking for a significant increase of the unbundling price. You know that there are discussions with the regulatory body ARCEP with a consultation in progress. Our request is to have this significant increase because we consider that it's consistent with the trajectory trend of our costs in copper in France. What will be the end of the game? What will be the final decision? We don't know yet. Don't worry. If the decision was not as high as we expect, there is no risk because we put in our guidance of EUR 500 million EBITDA decrease. We put a conservative hypothesis, so there is nothing to worry about this question of unbundling.
It will be only a bonus, and we do expect that we'll get this significant increase in the unbundling tariffs at the end of the consultation.
Well, thank you, Jérôme. Thank you, Fabienne. I think we have time for a last question.
Thank you. We will take our last question from Georgios Ierodiaconou at Citi.
Yes, hi, and thank you for taking my questions. I have two follow-ups actually on some of the previous questions asked. You mentioned energy costs in one of the previous answers that is 2% of sales. I just wanted to confirm whether that's the total energy cost or the component which is linked to the commodity prices. I believe usually around 50% of the total exposure is the one that's volatile. Linked to that, whether you could comment on the hedging exposure in 2023. I think you mentioned 85% in 2022. If you could perhaps give us an indication for the following year. My second question, and sorry to go back into this, but it's a follow-up on Spain.
Thank you for being very upfront and transparent about this. Perhaps a way to answer this question would be some of the combinations that do not involve you may appear, at least for us, easier from an antitrust perspective than some of the combinations that would involve you. I'm just curious if you could comment on that and if you believe that the net effect is positive or negative on wholesale, positive on retail, the net effect is positive, whether that is a consideration when it comes to your decision to get involved at the end of the stage. Thank you.
Maybe-
Thank you, Georgios. On the first question on energy, my 2% is covering the total energy cost. It's slightly above EUR 600 million, and it's the total cost of energy. In terms of covering, I gave the 85% mark for Europe in 2022, and we are obviously working to see how much we can cover the future years. This is ongoing work. We are signing PPAs in a number of countries, also investing in solar farms, et cetera. This is ongoing work. This is for the first question.
All right. On your second question, well, I will answer that the only, in my opinion, combination that really would raise a major antitrust concern is a combination including Telefónica. For the rest of the market, I think everything is possible. I am not saying that everything is equally simple, but everything is feasible. There is no, I mean, obstacle or major obstacle in the antitrust treatment of a combination, as far, of course, as Telefónica is not part of the game. My second point would be that I think that everyone should be a little
Cautious about the way we are looking at antitrust treatment in Spain. What I mean is that it is usually heard that it is better or easier or simpler to have an antitrust review in Spain than in Brussels. Meaning that, of course, the combinations that would be under a local antitrust scrutiny would be more likely to happen without major remedies than in Brussels. I think that this is a pure speculation in fact. We have some examples in the past. Look at what happened in Germany, for instance, where the local antitrust was firmly against the in-market consolidation, and Brussels decided to authorize this. I ask everyone to be cautious about that.
I think that once again, everything is open in Brussels or in Madrid, with the exception of something that would involve directly Telefónica. It is a matter of designing a good project, of anticipating the good remedies that will answer the concerns of any antitrust authorities in Brussels or in Madrid. I think it's time to say goodbye. As you understand, this is certainly my last presentation and message to you. I just want to tell you goodbye, to tell you that I was very happy to have those exchanges and relationships with all of you. I know personally a number of you. I think you are very professional.
From time to time, challenging or all the time challenging, in fact, but very professional. You know, we learned a lot from you. I think you helped us to maybe improve also the way we manage the company. I want just to end by saying again how confident I am in Orange. I do believe that today, the Orange stock is the best available stock in Europe, if you really consider all the spectrum, I would say, of criteria. Of course, we have challenges. We are perfectly aware of that. You know those challenges. Once again, I think we have very strong assets, and we have unbeatable position in the telco space in Europe. That would be my last word.
Thank you again. Of course I wish Orange the best for the future. Thank you.