We thank you very much everybody to be here today, even if it was a bit difficult to come to Bridge. We are very happy to welcome you at Bridge for this presentation, full year presentation and Capital Market Day 2023. Just, this presentation will be recorded, uploaded on the internet, of course, available on investor relation website. I just want to remind you, we have a first session of your presentation of full year 2022, starting at eight, ending at 8:45. We will have a short break. Please be in time. We will be back at nine. Be back a few minutes before in order to start at nine. That's very important, we will go through the Capital Market Day.
We start now with the full year presentation, and I will now hand over the floor to Christel. Thank you so much.
Thank you, Patrice. Good morning, and welcome to our full year 2022 financial results presentation. I will start with the key highlights of the fourth quarter, and then I will leave the floor to Ramon to detail our results. Let's start straight on slide four with the key achievements of the quarter. We delivered strong EBITDA growth in the fourth quarter and met our full year guidance despite the inflationary context. Thanks to price increases we implemented in all our European countries, strict cost and CapEx discipline, and the slowdown in fiber rollouts in France, as we reached over 90% of our 2023 connectable home target. These good results were also made possible by our continued efforts on customer satisfaction with an NPS improvement in France of more than six points in 2022, and a decreasing mobile churn also in Spain and Poland.
In addition, Orange Money was back to growth this quarter, and TOTEM confirmed its strong commercial momentum by signing this quarter a new commercial agreement with Iliad in France. Finally, we continue to develop Orange Cyberdefense through the acquisition of two companies in Switzerland, which gives us a presence in nine countries and takes us very close to our target of EUR 1 billion revenues in 2023. We also believe that strong economic performance is only possible with social and environmental leadership. Here are the main KPIs that we use to monitor our progress toward a more sustainable, inclusive and responsible world by 2025. I will elaborate on this key element of our transformation later this morning.
In line with our commitments, the financial results set out on this slide demonstrate our ability to offset inflationary pressures through our strong pricing power, with the acceleration of revenue growth at +1.3% and through cost discipline. Over the year 2022, we managed to offset around 40% of the inflationary pressure on our costs, thanks to price increases. Thanks to the impressive EBITDA growth in this quarter at +8.5%, of which +5.6% coming from the base effects, we have achieved our full year EBITDA guidance with a 2.5% growth. This strong EBITDA performance, combined with the beginning of the structural decrease in our ECAPEX are the drivers of our EUR 3.1 billion organic cash flow, which is also well within our guidance.
Finally, our very solid balance sheet with a stable net debt to EBITDA ratio of 1.93 times represents an important asset within the current environment. With that, I will now hand over the floor to Ramon.
Thank you, Christel. Good morning. Let's start with group revenues, which grew by 0.6% in 2022, reaching EUR 43.5 billion. As highlighted, top line growth accelerated during the year, driven by strong retail revenues on the back of price increases, which offset the decrease in wholesale, with also growth in equipment sales. Looking at our segments, Middle East Africa remains our main growth driver with revenues up 6.4%. Europe is back to growth at 0.6% thanks to the well on track recovery in Spain, where revenue has been back to growth since Q3. The continued strong performance of Poland and Belgium also contributed to this positive result. Enterprise posted a small 0.2% growth, IT and IS activities offsetting the decline of the legacy business.
France was down by 1.1%, with the decline in wholesale partly offset by retail services growth of over 3% excluding PSTN. On the next slide, group EBITDA grew by 8.5% in Q4, of which 5.6% came from the base effect of the employee shareholding plan granted at the end of 2021. For the full year, group EBITDA was up by 2.5%, in line with our guidance. Stripped of both the employee shareholding plan and the FTTH co-financing received, group EBITDA grew by 2.3%. MEA remains the main contributor to this performance, with double-digit growth of 11%, more than offsetting the sharp deterioration in enterprise, which despite reducing its EBITDA loss between the first and second semester, ended at -19% over 2022.
All the other segments contributed to the growth in EBITDA in 2022. ICSS improved by EUR 141 million, thanks to significant cost rationalization of central functions. Europe grew by 1.6%, thanks to the turnaround in Spain, which halved last year losses at -4%. France was up 0.4%, supported by the growth in retail activity and cost discipline. TOTEM grew at 5.4%. Finally, Orange Bank improved its contribution despite restrictive macro conditions leading to stop mortgage loans while multiplying by 4x the value of its consumer credits year-over-year. All in all, in 2022, we improved the telecom EBITDA margin by 0.5 points to 30.1%. On the next slide, you see that our net income landed at EUR 2.6 billion with a significant EUR 1.8 billion increase.
The overall positive base effects were partially offset by the recognition this year of an impairment on Orange Romania of EUR 789 million due to the worsening competitive market environment. An additional provision for the voluntary senior part-time program in France to reflect a more than anticipated take-up, which will, however, support our financials going forward and more generally, our transformation journey. Our Scale Up savings program has been a major contributor to securing our guidance. The objective of our program was to reach EUR 600 million in net savings by end 2022 compared to 2019. We have exceeded this target by achieving over EUR 700 million of net savings by end 2022.
We achieved these savings by optimizing our headcount, supported by our senior part-time program, by a disciplined wage policy, and also by intensifying our rationalization initiatives, mainly in head office activities and support functions. In 2022, in addition to these initiatives, we launched contingencies across all geographies and were therefore able to absorb inflation impacts of around EUR 300 million. In other words, excluding the impact of inflation, we will have reached EUR 1 billion in cumulative savings compared to 2019, one year ahead of our 2023 target. Turning to our investments on slide 12. 2022 is confirmed as the starting point of ECAPEX decrease at group level, which were down by 0.7%. In Q4, the growth in investments was linked to their nonlinear timing in 2021.
Our three main countries decreased their ECAPEX in 2022 due to the slowdown of fiber rollout, especially France, with the biggest decrease of EUR 365 million. A limited part of this decrease has been reallocated to Africa, Middle East and will drive EUR 1 billion, fully in line with our guidance of at least EUR 2.9 billion, with growth of EUR 657 million derived from an increase in EBITDA and a decrease in ECAPEX. Net debt stood at EUR 25.3 billion at year-end. This EUR 1 billion increase came despite the growth in organic cash flow and is notably due to license payments and the purchase of outstanding hybrid notes in November for GBP 426 million.
Our net debt represents 1.93x EBITDA, well in line with our medium-term objective, delivering an improvement of our average cost of debt at 2.59%. Finally, our strong liquidity position of EUR 16.7 billion remains a crucial asset, especially in a tightening and volatile environment. Let's now start the business review with France, where revenues were slightly up in Q4, thanks to continued growth in retail services and a smaller decline in wholesale activities, a topic on which we will come back later today.
Indeed, retail revenues grew by 0.8% or by 2.4% excluding PSTN, thanks to strong net adds both on fiber, reaching 7.2 million fiber customers, and on mobile, reaching 581,000 mobile net adds in 2022, a record year since 2017, with a positive portability balance relative to all our competitors. Besides strong volumes, we continued to push on value with convergent ARPU up by 2%, a customer net promoter score up by six points. A reduced mobile churn at a record low level for a Q4. Over 2022, EBITDA was up by 0.4%, resulting in an EBITDA margin increase of 0.5 point to 37%. Improving profitability was the result of significant cost reduction efforts, France being the main contributor to the Scale Up program.
ECAPEX decreased by nearly 10% in 2022 due to the advanced rollout of fiber in France, where 33.5 million homes are now connectable, and the decrease in customer connections compared to last year. In light of an inflationary context that will weigh more heavily in 2023, we have already put in place measures to support EBITDA while continuing to reduce CapEx. We are actively participating in the ongoing repricing of the French market, and we will continue to drive down costs. Let's now turn to Europe, where growth continued this quarter, thanks to B2C, still driven by convergent price increases, B2B, and to the recovery of customer roaming. Wholesale revenue mainly reflects the regulatory cut in call termination rates.
We were able to deliver EBITDA growth of 1.6% this year, accelerating in the second half of the year, 2.6% increase after +0.6% in H1. This was due primarily to price increases implemented in all European countries, strict cost discipline to offset inflation, and the recovery of roaming. Overall, we delivered an ongoing improvement in Spain and an outstanding performance in the other European countries at +5.8%. The price increases that we have gradually introduced throughout the year have helped us to mitigate the effects of inflation in 2022 and should fully offset inflationary impacts, including energy, in 2023. In Spain, the return to growth was confirmed this quarter with revenues up again. The stabilization of retail was driven by a clear improvement in churn and an increase in convergent ARPU.
Thanks to the reshuffling of Orange convergent offers launched in August, the improvement of the value mix and our strict promotional policy, we expect this momentum to continue in 2023. We have just announced a new price increase from March on Orange convergent and mobile offers to counter inflation headwinds. The EBITDA improvement trend has continued with -1.5% in H2, combined with a return to both operating cash flow and organic cash flow growth in 2022. This is the result of the recovery plan initiated in 2020, which includes the ongoing transformation of our local B2B business and a relentless focus on cost reduction. All this supports our objective of a return to strong EBITDA growth in 2023. Let's move on to Africa, Middle East, which contributes increasingly to group growth. Full year revenues increased by 6.4%.
Our mobile customer base reached 143 million at the end of 2022, up 6%, of which 53 million 4G customers up by 19%. At the same time, the Orange Money active customer base grew by 16% to reach 29 million. On the fixed side, our fixed broadband base reached 2.8 million, up by 24%. In the last quarter, revenues were up by 5.7%, with data up 18%, fixed broadband up 19%, and B2B up 16%. The Orange Money business is already back to growth at 5.7%, thanks to our quick and decisive action, translating into an increase in transaction value to a record of EUR 100 billion this year.
We achieved in 2022 a double-digit EBITDA growth of 11%, greater than revenue growth, thanks to a strict control of indirect costs, which grew at a slower pace, translating into an EBITDA margin improvement of 1.6 point to 37.3%. Turning to OBS, our enterprise segment. Revenues recorded a slight growth both for the quarter and full year, thanks to the growth in mobile and IT and IS, which together offset the decline in legacy business. Regarding our EBITDA, which is still decreasing, even though less in H2 than in H1, we know we have a situation to tackle. We will elaborate on the OBS recovery plan, a group priority, later this morning. Let's now move to TOTEM before closing with our guidance for the year.
At the end of 2022, TOTEM owns 19,500 sites in France, up by almost 400, and 7,600 sites in Spain. In 2022, revenues were up by 15% and EBITDA was up by 5%, despite the certain costs of the new entity. Only one year after the carve-out, TowerCo has achieved its first commercial successes, demonstrating the attractiveness of our mobile infrastructures and the quality of our expertise with Telefónica in Spain, iliad in France, and the network deployment on a future Paris Metro line. As a result, hosting revenues from third parties grew by 10% in 2022, and our tenancy ratio increased to 1.37 tenants per site, a first step towards achieving our 1.5 target by 2026. Let me now hand over to Christel, who will conclude this presentation.
Thank you, Ramon. Let's have a look at our guidance. We achieved all our 2022 financial commitments, demonstrating our resilience in a difficult environment with a +2.5% EBITDA growth and the start of our ECAPEX decrease, both fueling a significant growth of our organic cash flow while maintaining a stable leverage ratio and a EUR 0.70 dividend. Looking ahead to 2023, whatever the level of inflation, we are determined to continue to grow EBITDA and to pursue the ECAPEX decrease. I therefore reiterate our objective to reach at least EUR 3.5 billion organic cash flow in 2023, while maintaining a leverage ratio around two times on the medium term. Our guidance, as always, is set on a pro forma basis, meaning it does reflect our intrinsic performance and does not include any change of scope.
Finally, regarding the dividend, we will propose an increase the dividend flow at EUR 0.72, of which EUR 0.30 as interim dividend in December 2023. Building on our solid cash growth trend, we have set our strategic plan for the coming years, which I look forward to presenting to you later. Thanks for your attention. We are now happy to take your questions before turning to the next step.
Nicolas, maybe the first one. Microphone on. Thank you.
Thank you. Hi, Nicolas Cote-Colisson from HSBC. I've got three very short questions. The first one is just to confirm your guidance is made on the basis of constant foreign exchange. Secondly, in France, you mentioned low churn in Q4. Are you seeing any clients downspinning or taking cheaper offers? The last one is on cost savings. If you can just detail the EUR 300 million impact from inflation. Thank you.
Okay. On the guidance, yes, we always have a pro forma basis for our guidance, which reflects only the intrinsic performance of the activities. On cost savings and the impact of inflation of the 300 figure I gave, you have three main elements here. First important point is I would like to re-emphasize, you know, the success of the cost savings programs we have. Delivering EUR 700 million of net indirect cost savings on this period, despite all these headwinds, is, I would say, quite outstanding and is well in advance of the guidance we gave for the year, which was EUR 600 million savings.
If you look at the impact of inflation, you have roughly EUR 150 million for energy costs. This is consistent with the figures we gave previously. We will have for 2023 another impact which will be a bit higher. We have roughly EUR 100 million of the impact of wage increases, which were higher in this context of inflation. We have around EUR 50 million which come from subcontractors. You know that we made an effort to accompany our partners in this difficult context and a few other costs. The EUR 300 million is roughly EUR 150 million energy, EUR 100 million for wages and EUR 50 million for the other issues.
May-maybe on your question regarding do we see the impact, I mean, on churn from repricing, it's too early. I mean, that's something that first we are monitoring very closely, obviously. What we see is more-- less, especially in France, less aggressive promotional campaigns from the market, and a general increase in front book prices, both in mobile and broadband. So it's probably still too early to draw conclusions. But yeah, we so far, we don't see massive impact.
Jakob, over there. Thank you.
Hi, Jakob Bluestone from Credit Suisse. Firstly, just on France EBITDA in H2. If we strip out the sort of comp effects, so the costs that you had in 2021, it looks like your EBITDA probably would've been down during the second half of the year, which maybe is a little bit softer than expected. Is that just related to those cost effects that particularly fell in the second half, or is there anything else you'd particularly highlight on why the sort of underlying French EBITDA was down in the second half?
Then just secondly, in terms of your 2023 free cash flow guide, the above EUR 3.5 billion, can you maybe just sort of walk us through what are the items below EBITDA minus CapEx, to get to the EUR 3.5 billion? It looks like there might be an improvement in working capital, perhaps. If you can just sort of help us understand the drivers, below EBITDA and CapEx. Thank you.
On the France EBITDA Q4 performance, I think, I mean, in France, generally speaking, we have two trends. One, which is a very solid retail performance and obviously a wholesale performance. We mentioned that actually the decline in wholesale was actually slower than we've seen earlier in the year in Q4. We will come back to that, I mean, to these two trends in the following presentation, of course. Indeed, we had the massive base effect from the previous year. I don't have any specifics on the Q4 trend. At least there's no specific in Q4 that we had not seen earlier in the year.
The question was really why was H2 EBITDA down excluding the base effects? I guess the answer is just the OpEx and the wholesale, or is there something else?
It's the wholesale impact. I mean, wholesale is impacting our EBITDA trajectory in France, and we'll come back to that. I guess that's the negative trend that you see. I can't comment on why H2 would be different from H1, but.
We can also recall, Jacob, that when we started the year in 2022, the expectation that EBITDA in France would be down for the year. Don't forget this. So H2, H1, you have some cyclicity here, but the end game in 22 is better than expected. We were expecting a negative outcome for France in EBITDA in 22, and you end the year with a +0.4% with a number of elements due to inflation, co-financing. You know, there was a drag also on co-financing, so there are many elements here. I think overall, what I would recall from 22 for French EBITDA is that the performance was better than initially expected.
I think it's quite an outstanding performance, if I may say so, with a very strong commercial performance, incredibly good performance in terms of cost control. We may come back to it later, but I would say the final figure is probably better than the one you expected for 2022 in France. On your question on, what is below operating cash to drive organic cash flow growth. In fact, our organic cash flow growth in 2023 for the guidance of at least EUR 3.5 billion is really essentially, if not fully, driven by the operating cash, which is progress in EBITDA and strong decrease in CapEx. Working cap is not an explanation of this growth, okay?
The other elements in terms of tax and interest on the debt are also balanced. Really operating cash is explaining organic cash in 2023. Let's move to Andrew, please.
Morning. Thanks, everyone. It's Andrew Lee from Goldman Sachs. Thanks for very clear and straightforward group guidance. I guess what everyone's trying to do now is try and dig into the drivers underneath the bonnet. Just following on from your questions on France and growth in 2022, looks like there's a guidance for kind of slight decline in EBITDA. I know, Christel, you said you wanted to talk about this later, and I'm sure we'll get more detail later, but one of the big concerns is that wholesale drag and the overlapping networks and how that's maybe changing the structural drivers of your French business. It looks like there's slightly greater drag in 2023.
I wondered if you could just give us some high level comments on France and wholesales, you know, wholesale as a driver of that, just pertaining to those points. If I might just ask a second very quick question, just restructuring and employee reduction, is that still included as a cost item in your free cash flow guidance? Thank you.
On your first question, I hope the next presentation will really address that because we know that's a question that you ask. Indeed, the guidance in France will be slightly decreasing for EBITDA, and that's because of the wholesale impact. Also with an engine on retail that will be very solid. We'll come back to that in the second part of this morning, and I hope we address the question. That's the reality in France. On the guidance and restructuring, I mean, we have massive departure of employees because of our early retirement program that was fully booked in our 2022 and actually 2021 accounts.
For next year, we do not include any more, I would say, massive reduction of departure program. We will have, as always, small restructuring because of non-continuity of activity. We will discuss also later this morning how we transform our enterprise business, which will also be one of the big areas where we have to address our cost structure. Really the free cash flow guidance does not include any more massive, I would say, early retirement program as we've seen.
We don't have any question from the call. Anything else from the ground? In that case, we can make a break.
That's good.
Thank you. It will be longer. Be back before 9:00 A.M., please. Well, everybody is back. Thank you so much to be so punctual. We really appreciate, so we're gonna start in time. We are in advance, absolutely. We will be... Once again, I tell you that this is also for the people who join us immediately, that this presentation will be recorded. Replay. There will be a replay available on the website. We are now going through the Capital Market Day 2023, with the period 23-25 through the strategic plan presented by Christel Heydemann, our CEO. It start at 9:00 A.M., ending at 11:30 A.M., and we will be making half presentation and half Q&A, and I hope you will be less shy in the ground or in the air. Thank you very much, and I hand over to Christel immediately.
Good morning, everyone. I'm really pleased to present today the Orange Group's new strategic plan together on stage with Ramon Fernandez, our CFO, Aliette Mousnier-Lompré, CEO of Orange Business, Michaël Trabbia, CTIO and CEO of our wholesale division, and Jérôme Hénique, CEO of Orange Middle East and Africa. Our plan is based on one strong conviction. Telecommunications have become essential. In addition to the explosion in digital usage and increasingly high customer expectations, the sector needs to respond to the growing challenges of resilience. Our industry is now at a crossroads. Our plan will be based primarily on our strength. Orange is proud to be one of the world's leading telecommunications companies, the leader in fiber deployment and present in 26 countries in Europe and Africa.
Our results released this morning demonstrate that we have achieved all our financial objectives despite 2022 headwinds, thanks to pricing actions and cost containment. This proof of our resilience and the quality of our fundamentals allow us to have a long-term sustainable growth ambition for our group. We do not underestimate the difficulties within the sector and our environment, and therefore, the need in parallel to transform our company to increase agility. I took office 10 months ago and spent a significant amount of time meeting staff and reviewing all our activities and geographies. I will now present our new plan, which is built on four pillars and a new solid foundation. The first pillar, capture full value from our core business. The second pillar, capitalize on our infrastructure assets, which are the strategic and long-term nature.
The third pillar, transform and focus our B2B division while investing in our fast-growing cybersecurity business. The fourth pillar, continue to grow in Africa, a long-term growth market where we have a leading position. This new plan is based on the implementation of a new enterprise model that I will summarize in three words: performance, excellence, and trust. Performance with a focus on our operational and capital efficiency, and more generally, on execution with an industrial approach that must be best in class. Excellence with the expertise of Orange women and men written in our group's DNA. Trust, which is at the heart of Orange purpose. It continues to be the common thread running all our decisions. By 2025, we plan a continued organic cash flow growth, as well as a responsible sharing of our value creation.
In particular, our confidence in cash flow generation will translate into progressive dividend increase policy. It is therefore with enthusiasm and determination that I will present to you today, surrounded by my team, our strategic plan, which will answer all the questions that you shared with me when I took office. Here's today agenda with part one, outlining our strong fundamentals, part two, describing the four pillars of our new strategic plan, part three, explaining our new enterprise model, and finally, part four, clarifying our capital allocation policy and guidance. Let's move straight to part one. I would like to start by highlighting our very strong fundamentals. Orange today has an undisputable lead on fiber rollout in Europe. We have more premises that are connectable to fiber than Dutch Telecom, Vodafone, British Telecom, and Telecom Italia combined.
This leading position in fiber rollout explains the decrease in our ECAPEX, in particular, fiber ECAPEX and the monetization potential ahead of us. Let's begin with France, where FTTH has been extensively rolled out almost to the point of completion. Our first network already gives us access to more than 33 million premises connectable to fiber or 76% of all premises. In private areas, we will complete our current connectable lines by using our own deployments for fewer than 3 million lines, by accessing the networks of third parties for the remainder. In public initiative network areas, our part of the rollout is fully managed by Orange Concessions, we will complete our current connectable lines with a tactical mix of co-financing and leasing.
I would like to highlight that we also offer a full, very high broadband connectivity across the entire country already, thanks to fixed wireless access or satellite solutions. In addition, apart from network size, the main competitive advantage for Orange is being the first mover. Indeed, France perfectly embodies this unique advantage with fiber penetration within our customer base that has doubled within three years up to 58%. A sustained and maintained market share, and above all, a front book price differential with ADSL maintained at EUR 5. At the end of 2022, 22% of our own fiber network was monetized through retail, and 69% when adding wholesale. This positioning as a fiber pioneer has improved customer satisfaction, increased the value of our offers, and as such, consolidated our commercial leadership in France.
To sum up, fiber is extensively deployed in France, so we are entering a slower rollout phase with significant remaining monetization potential. Let's now see how the French experience has been applied to the rest of Europe. Elsewhere in Europe, more than 60% of our premises in Spain and close to 50% in Poland have already been connected to fiber. In these two countries, in which we have achieved more than 90% of our deployment targets, the roll-outs no longer have a significant impact on our consolidated ECAPEX, thanks to the leasing contracts concluded in Spain and our FiberCo in Poland. The pace of rollout for the other European countries, which are less advanced with fiber, will be set to maximize our commercial trajectories and boost our convergent strategy. We will be fully convergent in all our European countries after the VOO acquisition in Belgium.
Following this deep dive into fixed infrastructure, let's review our best-in-class mobile infrastructure. Our 4G coverage is now approaching 100% in Europe and exceeds 90% in Middle East, North Africa region. The penetration of 4G in Africa, Middle East has increased sharply since 2019 with 66% coverage. There is still a significant potential ahead as it represents only 37% of our mobile base. In terms of 5G, we cover more than 50% of the population in France, while outside France, 5G is now marketed in seven countries. Spain is the most advanced market, with 5G covering more than 75% of the population. We monetize 5G with a premium price compared to 4G. Using this new technology as a differentiating factor with high-end and convergent offers while investing in it at the pace of adoption.
That said, the monetization potential of our mobile infrastructure is still very significant. Our mobile ambitions will fuel our ESG commitments since 5G allows a reduction in consumption per gigabyte ten times lower than 4G. For these investments into infrastructure to create value, they must be recognized by our customers for the network quality provided. The quality of our networks and excellence of our customer service in Europe speak for themselves. With massive increases in NPS over the past three years and a reduction of mobile churn. This has allowed us to increase our mobile and convergent customer bases in Europe by 5% and 8% respectively over the period. This also demonstrates the power of Orange brand, which is ranked the second most valued telco brand in Europe in 2023. Let's see how we've been able to tackle the return of inflation in Europe.
We know there are two crucial means to tackle this issue. First, to increase prices, and second, cost discipline. These explain our strong 2022 results. We will need to pull these levers even further, as I will detail later. Alongside these two major actions, we have proven our resilience thanks to several differentiating factors. Our high levels of energy hedging, our payroll discipline, the ownership of our infrastructure. The strength of our balance sheet, which will be key. The bargaining power of buying our partnership with Dutch Telecom, totaling approximately EUR 15 billion of OpEx and CapEx orders per year. Our lead in fiber rollout, allowing reduction in CapEx. These trends demonstrate Orange resistance to headwinds and how we've been able to achieve our financial targets in 2022, in particular, cash flow generation.
Organic cash flow has indeed jumped by almost a third since 2019. This was the result of our capacity to leverage our convergent network strategy in Europe, acceleration in Africa, Middle East, and strong cost discipline compensating the challenges of our enterprise segment. This performance has been achieved in a challenging regulatory context. European policymakers now acknowledge the need to invest in digital infrastructure, and that the current regulatory framework has favored a transfer of value to big techs. This framework has therefore reached its limits in today's volatile environment. Digital infrastructure are more crucial than ever for strategic independence. We have already made some progress, for example, with the symmetrical regulation for all fiber players in France and the EU's launch of an initial investigation into fair share. We will go further.
In France, we are working with ARCEP on the unbundling and civil engineering tariffs in wholesale to reflect our actual cost. At the European level, we are joining our European peers in the call for easing the terms and conditions of internal market and cross-border consolidation so that telecom operators can gain the necessary scale. Ensuring that big tech platforms also contribute fairly to network costs, just as wholesale relationships apply between operators. Ensuring that regulatory actions favor investments in networks more than an escalation of prices in spectrum auctions. Let's now move to the details of our plan. As I said earlier, this new strategic plan is based on four pillars: Monetize, capitalize, focus and transform, grow, fueled by a new enterprise model. Let's start with the first pillar of the plan. Monetize, which aims at capturing growth from our assets, building on our strengths and excellence.
This first pillar concretely translate into four main actions: Refocusing on our core business, leading by excellence in customer service, boosting our network's performance, and driving our value strategy in France and Europe. We have launched a comprehensive review of our business portfolio and have already started a disposal process with the sale of OCS and Orange Studio to refocus on our role as content distributor. In addition, we have stopped the connected hub offer in France. We have also launched a strategic review for Orange Bank activity in Europe to see how best we can capitalize on its improving financial trajectory in connection with its good commercial performance. We'll come back to this in due course. The stand-alone plan for the bank is to reach break even at the turn of 2025, 2026. This demonstrates a new agile approach to our business portfolio.
Secondly, we will leverage our excellence in customer experience, enhanced by a greater integration of AI to support our value strategy. Let's see how we do this in concrete terms. We want to become the market reference in customer experience. This means a smoother and more personalized physical and digital customer journey. Specifically, we will continue to increase the share of digital in sales and in customer support. We will also leverage AI at scale to improve our ability to predict customer expectations, observing that recommendations made by AI to sellers have already increased sales in France by 6%. We will focus on safe, seamless, and green offers. Safe with cybersecurity built into the network. Seamless with connectivity that's personalized, modular, flawless on the go. Green with, for instance, repaired and refurbished devices.
We are striving to improve our NPS in all geographies. A third key monetization tool is our commercial and pricing strategy. The monetization of our investment in Europe is fueled by a bold retail commercial strategy that includes repricing. With the spread of remote working, customers are ready to pay for an optimal connection and a quality customer experience. In an inflationary environment, our value strategy in Europe involves continued price increases that are calibrated and adapted to the competitive context in order to offset our cost inflation while, of course, closely monitoring customer satisfaction and churn. In Europe, including France, we plan to offset 70% of the inflation impact on our costs through price increases in 2023. These repricing actions go alongside our commitment to connectivity for all. Since we feature low income offers under 10 EUR in all our geographies.
In Africa and Middle East, we're also agile, and we will adjust prices with the necessary magnitude where it's relevant. Let's now go deeper into our countries, starting with France, to assess the commercial and financial trends for 2025. Over the next few years, France will face opposite trends with its retail and wholesale businesses. Starting on the retail side, we have been back to growth since 2021 despite the decline of ADSL, which has been offset by fiber, 5G, and the quality of the customer experience. We are confident that we will continue to achieve retail revenue growth, excluding PSTN, of between 2% and 4% per year by 2025. This will protect our market share as we pursue our value strategy enabled by high customer satisfaction.
Our NPS is already the highest in the market, and we aim to grow it by a further 10 points over the next three years. Commercially, by 2025, we plan that penetration of 5G will grow by threefold, reaching 70% of our mobile customer base. 80% of our broadband retail customers will be on fiber with 41 million FTTH connectable homes, up 7 million compared to 2022, of which half rolled out on our own. 75% of our own fiber network will be monetized by 2025. Retail and wholesale combined up three point versus previous target. We will supplement this fiber coverage with 4G, 5G and satellite offers in the most remote areas as it is the most cost-effective way to ensure a 100% very high broadband access. Let's now focus on the wholesale.
On wholesale, the switch from copper to fiber has accelerated. As a result, our wholesale copper revenues are decreasing faster than expected. As such, we forecast that by 2025, the number of wholesale copper lines will be reduced by more than half, and copper will account for only 30% of our fixed wholesale revenues, which is manageable. This acceleration in transition has prompted us to adjust our forecasts. As of today, we plan on a wholesale revenue decrease of -EUR 1 billion over the 2020-2025 period, but the wholesale EBITDA loss will be much more limited to around -EUR 400 million over 2020-2025. Please note that in 2022, we managed to slightly grow France EBITDA despite a negative contribution from wholesale of EUR 300 million.
We have embedded in our plan a fair increase in unbundling and civil engineering tariffs by the regulator to reflect the mechanical increase in our unit cost of active copper lines. We will mitigate most of the decrease on wholesale EBITDA thanks to retail growth and continued transformation of our cost structure. ECAPEX decrease will support cash flow growth. In France, headcount has already decreased by 40% between 2012 and 2022. This annual net reduction of approximately 3,000 employees will continue until 2025 with natural attrition and our existing voluntary early retirement program. In summary for France, we will limit the impact of the switch from copper to fiber by 2025 thanks to the strength of retail and cost discipline. Between 2022 and 2025, we thus expect slightly negative revenues and EBITDA CAGR.
Nevertheless, cash flow will increase thanks to a significant decrease in ECAPEX now that the bulk of the fiber network has been deployed. Next, I want to show you how we plan in Europe to reinforce the trend of value creation, which is now well underway. In Europe, the 2019/2022 period was marked by the ramp-up of convergence, B2B, and the recovery of Spain. Europe, excluding Spain, generated a revenue CAGR of +3.4% and an EBITDA CAGR of +4.3%. Our convergence strategy will represent two-thirds of our fixed broadband base by 2025, with a convergent base CAGR of 5%. The acquisition of VOO in Belgium with its very high speed network will help us achieve this objective. Orange Belgium should double its fixed broadband market share and generate significant synergies.
The B2B business, which is managed directly in each European country and not by our enterprise segment, will also be a strong growth driver with mid-single digit revenue CAGR. Our value strategy in Spain will allow a return of EBITDA growth from 2023. In summary, the Europe segment, including Spain, will generate over the period 2022-2025 a low single digit revenue CAGR and a mid-single digit EBITDA CAGR with a mechanical improvement of the EBITDA margin. In order to strengthen European growth, we have also negotiated several consolidation and partnership deals to maximize value within our European footprint. We have initiated two important transactions. A combination project with MásMóvil in Spain has just been filed to the EU Commission and VOO in Belgium, pending imminent approval from the competition authorities. Once completed, both operations will de facto have a very different profile.
In Belgium, we have also recently signed a new wholesale agreement with Telenet to access its fixed network and planned FTTH network in Flanders. As a reminder, these transactions are not yet finalized and so not yet included in our financial projections. The associated financial impacts will be communicated in due course. Let's continue with the second part of our strategic plan, capitalize, in which we want to emphasize the absolutely strategic nature of our activity as an industrial and infrastructure operator. Our proven fiber and mobile expertise will certainly future-proof the value of our network. Let's now deep dive on our network and infrastructure strategy with Michaël Trabbia, our CTIO and CEO of our wholesale division.
Thank you, Christel. Before turning to infrastructure value management, let's comment our network strategy. Our goal as operator is to become the reference in network agility, resilience, and performance. This ambition includes software transformation, automation, and AI. We will measure our progress in this transformation based on the standards set by the TM Forum for the level of automation in network operations. Our ambition is to move from level one or two currently, depending on the country, to level four by 2025, specifically on two key processes: the test integration deployment process and the network monitoring and fault management process. To further increase network automation, we are implementing group-wide network integration factories and shared operation centers. They will allow new on-demand network services operating in network as a service mode, creating test new business opportunities.
They will also strengthen the resilience and security of our networks by allowing way faster operations. For example, we will be able to have a complete recovery of a core mobile network in less than an hour, against at least one week today. We'll also be able to do continuous security updates and to do detection of network anomalies in three minutes instead of five hours. Finally, this transformation already helps us to optimize network CapEx and OpEx and to reduce network power consumption up to 20%. The use of AI at scale will be key for this transformation and is made possible by solid foundations. We manage security, data protection, ethics, and ESG requirements on a global basis. This allows us to dramatically accelerate access to data and to share and replicate use cases developed across the group.
This structural transformation for our networks will go hand in hand with the decommissioning of older technologies. In addition to simplifying processes and optimizing our costs, it will help to reduce our environmental footprint. Firstly, we will expand 4G and 5G and FTTH coverage, complemented, as Christel mentioned earlier, by fixed wireless access and satellite in remote areas. Secondly, we will retire legacy copper and first generation mobile technologies. Regarding mobile, Orange will decommission its 2G and 3G technologies in all European countries between 2025 and 2030. Regarding copper, decommissioning in France has already been initiated. The industrial closure phase will start in 2026 and end in 2030. By then, we will save copper maintenance costs while fiber maintenance costs are four times lower. We will manage this decommissioning with the objective of an overall neutral economic impact, notably thanks to the revision of unbundling prices.
Completely switching to more modern, secure, reliable, and energy-efficient technologies will also help reduce our carbon footprint, and therefore contribute to achieving our Net Zero Carbon objectives by 2030. Thirdly, we will maximize pooling of it, of infrastructure and network with brand sharing, TowerCo, FiberCos. Finally, we will further optimize network maintenance. Let's now turn to the management of our infrastructure that offers solid prospects for value creation. Orange considers its activity as an infrastructure operator to be absolutely strategic. The job of passive infrastructure manager is at the heart of our industrial know-how. These are businesses in which Orange has remarkable positions in Europe, with solid growth prospects over the coming decades, and particularly attractive risk-reward profiles. There are also strategic assets for our retail activity. In this context, our strategy is to continue to develop these asset classes in Europe.
The framework we set to ourselves to do so is unambiguous. We will act in strict compliance with the group financial guidance. We do not rule out external financing, including via deconsolidation mechanism, as with fiber cos in France and Poland. We definitely want to retain the option of keeping control of these assets in the long term to benefit from their value creation and to protect the telco value. On fiber as an infrastructure operator, Orange has rolled out 49 million home connectable, of which 46 million in Europe. This industrial expertise and best-in-class asset portfolio position Orange as a fiber pioneer in Europe. The value of this investment was fully recognized in 2021 by financial investor with our deals in France and Poland. Looking ahead, we will continue to work on different options to further develop this asset class.
Now on mobile, TOTEM has been fully operational since H2 2021. With 27,000 mobile sites in France and Spain, TOTEM is the number five player in the European TowerCo market. From a value creation perspective based on installed assets, the creation of TOTEM is already bearing fruit. Better asset knowledge allowing better management, land management and optimization, and an increase in the tenancy ratio, thanks to hosting agreements that follow on from our first commercial successes, notably with Telefónica in Spain and iliad in France. To achieve this as an industrial TowerCo, our offer differentiates itself from the competition, thanks to our understanding of our customers' network issues. Most of our sites are fiber. We provide green energy in Spain, and we have a strong presence in French rural areas. In terms of developing now the tower base, TOTEM has several opportunities.
First, the contribution of other European Orange towers is under study. Second, we have initiated a build-to-suit program with third-party MNOs that is supported by our proven industrial firepower. Based on current agreements, we have set a target of circa +2,000 sites between 2022 and 2026. We are uniquely placed to participate in the European tower market consolidation. At the same time, in Africa and Middle East, we have full ownership of 30,000 towers, which opens value creation opportunities, always with the desire to retain control of our assets. Still in MEA, we plan to expand our mobile coverage in rural areas, notably through partnerships that would allow us not to burden our balance sheet while benefiting from optimized financing conditions.
To summarize the second component of the plan, our infrastructure strategy is to continue to invest in our unique assets, to keep them at the forefront of network developments driven by value creation. I will now hand over to Aliette, CEO of Orange Business, who will present the third part of our strategic plan, focus and transform.
Thank you, Michaël. Hello, everyone. I guess you saw that we announced this morning that Orange Business Services is becoming Orange Business. This name change symbolizes the simplification and the focus we want to achieve. As other operators, Orange Business is being disrupted by a fast changing market landscape. Collaborative tools, cloud and software are replacing telco legacy solutions such as fixed telephony and private enterprise networks, which were historical cash cows of Orange Business. Of course, this market shift, although accelerated by COVID, is not new. For over 10 years, Orange Business has been reshuffling its portfolio to build capabilities in the digital space.
Those digital activities represented 29% of the Orange Business mix in 2015, and it now accounts for 44%. This change in activity mix has not only very seriously impacted our growth margin mix, it has also converted Orange Business into a kind of hybrid object, half telco, half digital company. This has created maneuvering difficulties, which bundled with a very large portfolio of activities, have also created day-to-day operational execution challenges. This has translated into a 32% EBITDA decline over the last three years. The 2025 financial plan we are showing today has been totally rebased compared to what was presented to you at the B2B day, mid-2021. Of course, the situation calls for a decisive overhaul of the Orange Business operating model. Before detailing the plan, let me be explicit about where do we want to go.
My very strong conviction is that while networks are becoming software, and while software is moving to the cloud, the worlds of telecom and the worlds of digital will ultimately converge. Traditional B2B telecom services are being transformed into infrastructure integration and system integration. In this context, Orange Business has very differentiated assets in the fields of what I'm calling the three C. The three C are connectivity, cloud, and cybersecurity. Those assets and expertise are highly recognized by our enterprise customers and put us in a unique position to efficiently orchestrate the global digital infrastructures. Consequently, I truly believe that Orange Business has a strong right to play and can become the European reference as a network and digital integrator. To succeed, we must decisively shift our operating model and adopt all the attributes of an integrator. This will require an energetic action plan.
Such action plan includes changing our organization, which was done on January first, leveraging the various digital companies we acquired in the past decade in a kind of cultural reverse takeover. The next step is to rework our cost structure. We aim at significantly reducing both our SG&A and production costs through an ambitious cost-saving plan. I will not share the numbers today, as I'm sure you will understand that I will keep the exclusivity of the details to our social partners. I will trigger a consultation process with them mid-March, and I will report progress on a quarterly basis. We will do all of that while providing comprehensive training to our staff for acquiring the necessary skills. In this fast changing world, the required skills are changing much faster than individual career cycles.
We have the responsibility, I have the responsibility to accompany our employees through those evolutions. We will therefore set up a large-scale reskilling and upskilling program with more than 5,000 employees who will be trained from traditional telco areas to the world of virtualization, cloud, data, AI, and cyber. Let me share with you the overall architecture of the global action plan based on four levers, which will enable a return to profitable growth in 2025. The first lever that you are seeing here is about simplification and cost reduction. It includes several items, such as a new organization since January 1st, a new linear management team reduced from 17- 12 members with more than half new, including three external joiners.
It's also about the rationalization of the past seven business units into three business lines under a single marketing and product entity. The simplification of our pre-sales processes under two geographical zones owning the P&L, whereas such a P&L used to be monitored in a fragmented way across the seven business units. Last but not least, the adaptation of our cost structure, as already mentioned. The objective is to bring Orange Business back in line with market standards in each of its activities by ending low-margin contracts and better passing on inflation, increasing our offshore ratio, leveraging organizational synergies, and rationalizing our application portfolio. Moving to the second lever. It's about focus our investments into priority areas. Orange Business will focus on four strategic value propositions, where it is uniquely differentiated thanks to its deep understanding of enterprises' infrastructures.
This focus includes a drastic simplification of the product portfolio through a reduction by half of the marketing products within the next 12 months. The four value propositions are the following. The first one is the transformation of digital infrastructures, leveraging our ability to orchestrate network, cloud and security components all together in order to lay the foundations for secured and flexible connectivity to the cloud. The second one is the foundations of the employee experience, combining our know-how in connectivity, mobility, voice, video, and collaboration tools while granting security. The third one is the foundations of the customer experience, combining our know-how in contact centers, networks, voice, AI, and IT integration. The fourth one is the foundation of digitization of operations, especially in factories, based on our mastery of 4G and 5G private mobile networks, IoT connectivity, edge cloud and security.
Moving now to the third pillar, the third lever, which is the transformation of the traditional connectivity business. The core of our full value proposition, you saw that, I said it already, is about orchestrating and securing end-to-end digital infrastructures. To do so, we will leverage our strengths in next gen secured connectivity. It's about reinforcing our position of leader in virtualized networks, but also about providing fast and agile fiber on 5G deployments. We are launching an ambitious project to digitalize our entire connectivity portfolio and develop future-proof as-a-service next gen connectivity solutions. Last but not least, our fourth lever is about strengthening our digital capabilities in France and in Europe. I'm talking about cloud, data, digital, and more particularly cyber, which Christel will highlight in a minute.
We are aiming at keeping growth rates in line with the market while significantly improving profitability, again, by aiming at market margin levels, particularly in the cloud services area. Such an action plan and the redesign of the Orange Business company model aims at recovering EBITDA growth by the end of the plan. We will limit the growth margin decrease in our traditional fixed and mobile services to an average annual rate of -8% over the period. Conversely, our IT and IS services growth margin is expected to grow by +8% on average per year, fueled by IT services. Combined with our SG&A reduction efforts, EBITDA will return to growth in full year 2025. To conclude, as a recap, we aim at being a leading and high-performing network and digital integrator.
We clearly have the assets to do so, and we will adapt our operating model and cost structure accordingly. It will be done through a structured action plan on which I will regularly report progress. We will have a negative mid-single digit EBITDA CAGR over the period 2022-2025, and EBITDA will go back to growth in 2025 at the latest. Let's now go back to Christel, who will discuss a rapidly growing activity with cybersecurity.
Thank you, Aliette. This is an intense transformation plan, obviously, that includes a very dynamic activity, our Cyberdefense business. Our aim is, of course, to accelerate growth of Orange Cyberdefense. The market is forecast to grow around double digit over the coming years, and we have already demonstrated our ability to outperform the market. Orange is a leading and trusted operator, meaning that cybersecurity is in our DNA and is a core business, and we aim to be a leading player in Europe. Within the enterprise segment, with a revenue close to EUR 1 billion in 2022, Orange Cyberdefense is already close to its 2023 target. Organic growth will be supported by underlying market dynamics, of course, driven by the increasing needs from individuals all the way to large corporates.
The recent acquisitions in Switzerland, combined with other potential bolt-on acquisitions, will accelerate our growth beyond purely organic. We will continue to allocate additional resources to boost Orange Cyberdefense growth, we are targeting organic revenues above EUR 1.3 billion in 2025. Far this morning, we have outlined our growth perspectives in our core business in Europe, in our infrastructures, in our enterprise segment with Cyberdefense. In the fourth and final part of our plan, I will now ask Jérôme Hénique, our CEO of Orange Middle East and Africa, to present the exciting growth opportunities that we have in the region.
Thank you, Christel. It is worth pointing out that Middle East and Africa's turnover has already increased by 25% over the period 2019-2022, equivalent to a CAGR of +7.7%. Over the same period, EBITDA grew with a CAGR of 13.1%, almost twice the revenue rate, while OCF again doubled the bet with a CAGR of nearly +25%. ROCE is increasing and is greater than WACC. MEA now represents 16% of group sales in 2022, up from 13% in 2019. Over the same period, 2019-2022, retail activity, about 90% of turnover in 2022, grew by 32%, with the drivers being mobile data, B2B, fixed broadband, and with the mobile base up 17% at 143 million customers.
What operational levers will we use to maintain the strong organic growth in the area? There is a large potential related to demographics, internet adoption, and the growth in users, whose capture is made possible by network and infrastructure deployment. Our policy of digital inclusion, providing offers at attractive prices and digital training also positions us better to take advantage of these factors. Given this solid foundation, using the levers for growth and differentiation built up over 20 years, we will now go further. First, we plan to accelerate multi-services in the financial field, content, energy, agriculture, health and B2B. Second, we will also enrich our Orange Money offers to better counter OTT threats, and we will make it a true OTT digital platform. Let's now take a look at the trends that you can expect for MEA to 2025.
To start with, I want to confirm that the commitments made at our Africa Day 2021 for the period 2020- 2023 of around 6% revenue CAGR and double-digit EBITDA CAGR will all be met. Over the next three years, revenue growth will at least keep the same pace as the previous three years with a CAGR greater than 7%. This will be driven by the growth of our customer bases as well as our growth engines, once again, mobile data, Orange Money, fixed broadband and B2B, which will represent more than half of the revenues by 2025. On top of this, we'll continue to exercise cost discipline with a specific focus on sales and distribution costs, continued pooling, and shared services centers.
Strong top-line growth and disciplined execution will drive EBITDA growth with a 2025 CAGR of at least high single digit and an EBITDA margin close to 40% by 2025. We will secure this growth as the contribution of each of our four geographical clusters will be even more balanced in 2025 than in 2022 for both turnover and EBITDA. Our CapEx investment will support organic growth and will facilitate the ongoing network expansion in the most relevant locations. MEA CapEx will increase at a much lower rate than turnover, reducing the CapEx to sales ratio from more than 18% in 2022 to less than 16% in 2025. The continuous improvement in MEA's ROCE, which is higher than WACC, will continue. I will now give back the floor to Christel for the next chapter.
Thank you, Jérôme. Let's move to the next topic. The execution of our strategy will be based on the implementation of a new, clearer and more efficient enterprise model based on the three areas of action I have already stated this morning: performance, excellence, and trust. Let's now walk through these principles. Our environment is experiencing profound change, and the group faces major transformational challenges. To support these challenges, we will put in place this new enterprise model that facilitates more efficient and more rigorous execution. It will involve three areas of action fueled by our ESG commitments that I will describe later. Performance with a particular focus on our operational and capital efficiency, and more generally, on execution with an industrial approach that must be best in class and always focused on customer excellence.
We will simplify and optimize support functions, a transformation that is also triggered by the massive success of our senior part-time program. Excellence with the expertise of Orange women and men. We will continue to invest in talent development and skills to support future business needs through upskilling, reskilling, particularly in the areas of data, AI, and cybersecurity. Trust, which is at the heart of Orange purpose, it continues to be the common thread running through all our decisions and the guarantee of economic, environmental, and social performance, which itself will undergo a radical transformation. Our actions in all these areas, with an emphasis on ESG, will help us become more agile, to create room for maneuver and to reinvest in the growth of the group, our employees, and our businesses. Orange is the trusted player that gives everyone the keys to a responsible digital world.
This is our raison d'être, purpose. Environmental and social issues are profoundly changing the way Orange runs its business. Using its purpose as a compass, Orange will transform itself to develop a more efficient and more resilient enterprise model. Our ESG by design transformation relies on three major areas: environment, trust, and digital inclusion and empowerment. Our achievements are already acknowledged by strong ESG scores. For the first area, environment, we need to cope with multiple challenges, climate emergencies, as well as structural changes such as access to natural resources, legislation and regulations, and society's expectations. We want to be a driver of environmental transition, transforming ourselves with a strong commitment to be Net Zero Carbon by 2040, and a new milestone of 45% reduction in total CO2 emissions by 2030, promoting a circular economy within our processes and with our partners.
Our ambitions will be validated by SBTi. How will we meet this challenge? The group's main source of energy consumption is from networks and IT. In 2021, the Green ITN program facilitated the saving in energy consumption of nearly 960 gigawatt of electricity and 80 million liters of fuel oil. Amongst other ambitious measures to meet the challenge of reducing our carbon footprint, we will put the eco-design of our products and services at the heart of our decisions, with the aim of reducing their end-to-end environmental footprint. Our second area of commitment is to work for a society of trust, setting the ambition of being the leader in cybersecurity in Europe and a key player in digital trust.
We will achieve this by developing Orange Cyberdefense, reaffirming our policy of protecting personal data, promoting the ethical use of AI and data, increasing the awareness of responsible digital technology, and fighting cyber harassment. At Orange, we believe that digital is a powerful tool for inclusion. This is our third area of commitment. We are fulfilling our promise of digital inclusion and empowerment around three areas. Network and services access, offer affordability, and digital skills development. ESG is at the heart of all our processes with the full commitment of the group's management team, for whom part of the compensation is linked to non-financial KPIs. We would like to remind you of the 2025 ESG milestones, which we are fully committed to deliver. Of course, the ultimate goal of our new enterprise model is to create sustainable value and to strengthen our financial performance.
I will now hand over to Ramon to present the elements of our capital allocation policy.
Thank you, Christel. Let's start with cost discipline. Indeed, no fundamental transformation can be achieved without strict cost discipline, and we will continue along this path. Following the achievement of our 2019, 2022 cost saving plan, we expect to achieve again 5% net cost saving over 2022, 2025, despite inflation on a new cost perimeter of EUR 11.8 billion, excluding energy expenses, which are too volatile in the current context and anyway are addressed by their own specific optimization program. Our EUR 600 million cost reduction program will be powered by the initiatives already initiated within the current Scale-up framework, automation, digitalization in Europe, internal secondhand equipment exchange platform, et cetera. It will also be powered by the new enterprise model described by Christel with an optimization of support and central functions and further pooling of resources.
In France, the latest senior part-time programs allow a significant resizing, leading to more than 7,600 early retirements over 2022 and 2023. This is more than 10% of France workforce, with half of departures coming from central and support functions. This attrition effect will represent net EBITDA savings of around EUR 300 million between 2022 and 2025 on top of the EUR 150 million already achieved in 2022. We will also maintain strict CapEx discipline. As you can see, E-CapEx is now decreasing, thanks to our lead in the fiber rollout in France and in Europe, with a partial reallocation to Africa, Middle East to fuel that segment's strong growth. The group target of an E-CapEx to sales ratio of around 15% from 2023 is confirmed.
We have explained how we will increase group organic cash flow generation over the 3 years of the plan. Let's now take a look at our capital allocation policy before turning to our guidance. Our investments are made to support growth. At the same time, our permanent focus on sustainable value creation requires a diligent management of our assets. First, our roadmap to sustainable value creation will involve an even greater use of ROCE, internal rate of return, and payback tools with a long-term view at all levels of decision-making. Second, assets management with no taboo means conducting regular portfolio reviews that will determine, based on these criteria, the necessary measures to drive efficiency and transformation, monitor their implementation, and make the necessary divestments decisions. As part of this portfolio review exercise, decisions have already been taken. We will therefore approach without dogma the principle of asset rotation.
We always bear in mind that an asset can be monetized in part or in total as we continue our permanent quest to maximize an asset's inherent value and to reallocate resources towards our key priorities. Third, as part of an efficient capital structure, we will maintain a disciplined capital allocation policy supporting our strategic priorities. This will fuel a ROCE improvement between 100-150 basis points by 2025. We will pursue a highly disciplined M&A policy and remain open to strategic partnerships. In Africa, where we have not made any acquisitions since 2016, Africa, Middle East division will, as it does today, self-finance its CapEx plan and may use third-party capital for inorganic growth. Needless to say, we will continue to strictly control all our organic investments, reaching a group CapEx to sales ratio of around 15% from 2023.
Our policy of protecting our balance sheet structure will remain unchanged, and we confirm a medium-term leverage target of around two times. This will allow us to maintain the flexibility needed to meet our strategic challenges and to exercise, if we wish, the various options for regaining control of our joint ventures in due time. Our policy on shareholder returns will be fueled by our organic cash flow generation. Everything in this strategic plan have 1 overarching objective, sustainable value creation for the benefit of all the company stakeholders. I give now the floor back to Christel, who will end this presentation with the guidance.
Thank you, Ramon. First, we have already seen this morning our 2023 guidance confirming solid organic cash flow ramp-up with a dividend floor up to EUR 0.72 payable in 2024. Let's move straight to the guidance contained in the 2023-2025 strategic plan. To begin with, let me remind you that our guidance, as always, is set on a pro forma basis, meaning it does not include any change of scope. That being said, our EBITDA projections over 2022-2025 lead to a low single-digits group of EBITDA CAGR, driven by a high single-digit Middle East and Africa EBITDA CAGR, a mid-single-digit EBITDA CAGR in Europe, France remaining resilient with a slight decrease, and a recovery of Orange Business in 2025. Price increases, energy cost control, and the beneficial effects of the transformation will also fuel our margin increase.
We will decrease ECAPEX, reaching a run rate of 15% of revenues from 2023. This performance in turn will fuel a continuous increase in organic cash flow, reaching EUR 4 billion by 2025, and we expect ROCE growth over the plan period. As far as balance sheet structure is concerned, our policy will remain unchanged, and we confirm a medium-term leverage target of around 2 times in order to keep our current very attractive financing conditions. We aim at progressively increase our dividend from a floor of EUR 0.70 today to EUR 0.72 for 2023, payable in 2024, reaching a new floor of EUR 0.75 for 2024, payable in 2025.
To sum up, I hope that our in-depth dive into the different aspects of our new Lead the Future strategic plan has convinced you of our strength, our determination, and ability to generate more cash flow and create more value. The entire management team and I are now ready to answer all your questions.
Let's start now with Stephan. On your right.
Merci. Bonjour. Stéphane Beyazian, the question,
In English maybe, Stephan.
Sorry. My mistake. First question. Where do you see the difference in terms of the way you want to drive Orange-
Versus the way it was driven in the past, whether it's in terms of conducting business, in terms of addressing stakeholders, going forward, again, versus what was done in the past. Perhaps a second question regarding Africa. We've seen a little softer growth in Africa in the second half of 2022 compared to what you want to achieve for the next couple of years. Can you come back on perhaps some of the exceptionals that you had in 2022, and how you want to re-accelerate that revenue growth going forward? Thank you.
I'll take the first question, of course, and I'll let Jérôme answer on the second one. I think first, I hope you were convinced this morning that this company, Orange, made right strategic decisions in the past. We would not be the pioneer in fiber if we had not made the decision to invest in fiber way before all our other European competitors. The company has very strong strength. What I will focus on, and I think that's probably the difference you're alluding to, is that my maybe industrial or operational background makes me focus a lot more on execution. I think the entire management team is focused and committed to driving execution. I think I spent a lot of time. The entire employees of the company are really engaged and committed to succeeding.
They love and they're passionate with this company, they've also been very clear with me when I met with them over the past 10 months that we are sometimes too slow, not enough focused on execution. We need to free up energy in the company so that we just get the full potential that Orange deserves and that our customers expect. I think that's really the real difference is really this focus on execution that we will have as a management team, and maybe that's my own personal touch.
On, I'm not sure my mic. Yeah. Thank you. About Africa, slowdown on growth in H2, it's true for Q3 more than for Q4, where we recovered a 5.4% growth. The main reason was our strategy of answering to a price war on Orange Money on some countries, this has driven a drop in one of our four growth engines, which is Orange Money in 2022. As mentioned this morning, we recovered growth starting Q4, and a strong growth, particularly, you know, double-digit growth in December, which makes us confident that this growth will continue in the years to come.
It will be a double-digit growth for 2023, and a double-digit CAGR up to 2025. We had to reduce our prices, but this has driven a strong price, a strong elasticity on customer base, on volume of transactions, and on value of transactions. As mentioned this morning, we reached the threshold of EUR 100 billion value of transaction, which really makes us confident that in the future it will accelerate. We had as well some exceptionals in some countries, particularly adverse regulatory decisions in Ivory Coast that will no longer continue in 2023. That as well makes us confident that we will speed up starting 2023.
Let's start with Nick and then to Matthew. Nick first. Thank you.
Thanks very much. Yes, it's Nick Lyall from Salt Gen. Can I ask one? This morning you didn't mention anything particularly about new JVs or towers and transactions. Is it because of timing or maybe prices you're finding in the market? Is it more of a focus on 100% ownership and less minorities, a sort of simplification of the structure as well? On the dividend, the focus seems to be very much on the ordinary dividend. Again, should we count out things like specials when you're getting the cash in from Spain, for example? Again, no large one-off divvies or buybacks. Again, a focus on sort of simplicity in the ordinary dividend, please. Thank you.
On your first question, I think we have not made any new announcement, but I think we are very clear that we want to be pragmatic. In some cases, we are using JVs, and in some cases, we consider that some assets are less strategic on the long term, in which case we will, and we are already doing, I mean, sharing, maximum sharing, actually leasing some infrastructure. In other cases, when we have assets that we do consider being strategic for the long term, we can be open to bringing on some new investors, but we want to make sure that we keep the strategic control for the long term of those assets. There's not... It's not a black or white answer. It's really a case by case as we've been already doing it in the past.
Indeed, we didn't announce anything new this morning, but there will be. I mean, we will continue to implement a model that we've already implemented in France, in Poland, with our different assets. Regarding the dividend and your question specifically to the MásMóvil deal. I think that first of all, the MásMóvil deal, as you know, we just notified the competition authorities. We're still in the process and it's not done. The MásMóvil will be a JV for us, and we will only have 50% stake in this entity, which will be a highly leveraged entity, and for which we have an option to reconsolidate in the future. Today, we believe that the best option is to further consolidate our balance sheet with the proceeds coming from this transaction.
Matthew?
Good morning, and thank you for the presentation. I had a question first on ROCE. I see that you've given a number of indications on targets, and I welcome that in terms of your ROCE trajectory. I had two questions related to that. First, what is the starting point? Second, you've now looked at all the assets for over a year. You mentioned that you want to reassess the portfolio on a continuous basis. Should we assume that by now you're basically happy with all the assets you have, ex-excluding pay TV and maybe Orange Bank? Are you still in the process of looking at the assets and maybe within six months, 12 months, 18 months, you could consider other disposals. Where are you in this process of portfolio of asset revision?
I have a second question on your dividend policy, and I welcome the fact that you give floors for 2022, 2023 and 2024. You link it to the free cash flow growth. Rough math suggests that the growth in DPS is half the growth in free cash flow, and you shied away from linking it more precisely. What could be an upside to this DPS? Is it you're going to be having a faster acceleration in your free cash flow in the next few years? If you could give a bit of color on that. Very lastly, in terms of retail and wholesale price increases, what have you included in your guidance?
I think you mentioned some wholesale price increases, but you're also fighting for more, so I don't know if that's in there. In terms of retail price increases, what have you embedded? Thank you.
Thank you. I'll give you the ROCE question.
Okay. On the ROCE, there are many different types of calculations on the market, right? Let's say it's a good six as a starting point. What we said is that our objective is to increase this figure by 11, sorry, 100-150 basis points, in the next two years.
On the portfolio review, as you pointed out, indeed, we've made already a number of decision. As I mentioned this morning, we have also launched a strategic review for Orange Bank. I mean, you would not believe me if I tell you that we will stop here and never reassess, because the whole presentation this morning was hopefully very clear on the fact that we will, I mean, permanently manage our assets in these ways. Means that at this stage, there may be a few activities that actually I would consider not strategic, I'm not gonna mention them because otherwise we have no option to monetize them. That's the rule of the game.
On the dividend policy, I think you've made the conclusion that, I mean, the, a payout ratio linked to organic cash flow growth. Clearly, we want to create value, and organic cash flow is our KPI to create value. Indeed, we are showing this increase in flow. That's a signal to our investors that value comes from the plan, which is organic cash flow growth. We have not decided to create a mechanical, I would say, link between organic cash flow growth and dividend policy, payout policy. I'm sure we'll continue to discuss that, and we are very focused first on executing this three-year plan with this increase of dividend flow, of course.
Let's move to the operator, to Roshan waiting for a question, and we will be back to the ground.
There was a question on wholesale as well. On wholesale, we are indeed discussing with the regulator. It's been actually a bit in the news because we have a very firm position on what and on how the law works. Yes, we've indeed what we believe is a fair increase of some wholesale prices, regulated wholesale prices. I think, Michaël, maybe you want to give some details.
Yes. Yes, can you? We have included some fair increase in the wholesale prices, especially around EUR 2 on the unbundling price, and also some increase on the civil engineering, so which accounts all in all for around EUR 130 million in 2025.
Let's switch to the operator, and I think Roshan is queuing on. Operator, please.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Thank you. We will now take our question from Roshan Ranjit at Deutsche Bank. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
I've got three questions, please. Firstly, on Africa, Middle East, if I think back to the previous CMD, you were talking about trying to kind of crystallize value, and I think it goes back to some of the maybe pre-previous earlier questions. You have a number of, I guess, strategic assets there. How should we think about these this unit? Because I think at the time, and, you know, this has clearly increased now, I think it's 15% of your group EBITDA, but in terms of kind of the market giving you the credit for that asset, it seems still kind of, I guess, on the back burner in the eyes of the market.
How, how do you expect to drive that kind of value creation and bring that to the forefront of people's minds? Secondly, on cybersecurity, you talked about bolt-on deals, and you've highlighted the previous ones that you have done. Should we be thinking about future deals of a similar magnitude, or, you know, for the right opportunity, you could look at bigger assets? Finally, just on the new Scale-up program, you overachieved your target for this year, so 2022. If I remember correctly, I think there's still some delta left, around EUR 300 million of the old program.
I understand the cost base has changed. Should we be thinking about that EUR 300 million now being rolled into the new plan, or has that just been, I don't know, maybe a, you know, change of times meant that those incremental costs were harder to deliver? Thank you.
Thank you. I think, I mean, to your first question, I think it's not new that we try to convince you of the value that sits in our Middle East and Africa unit, and that's why that's one of the pillar of our plan. We will hopefully continue to execute as we've done very successfully in the past three years. Our plan is to continue to create value, EBITDA growth, and hopefully quarter after quarter, you get convinced of this extremely core asset for us and the potential value creation that sits in it.
Our position today in cyber is obviously made of both organic growth over the past 7, 8 years, as well as some deals, acquisition that we conducted. As we said, we will continue with bolt-on deals. I mean, the first growth engine is organic growth, of course, but we will do bolt-on deals if we see valuable assets that we consider bring value, as we've just done in Switzerland end of 2022. As to, I mean, larger deals, I don't know if there are many large deals that will exist, but we would always be very cautious on synergies, ability to digest.
Really, our plan today is more based on bolt-on, because we want to have a disciplined M&A policy and making sure that we execute on synergies of any deal we conclude. Expansion of footprint in Europe is something that we've done successfully through acquisition. That was the objective of the, of the acquisition in Switzerland, for instance. On Scale-up, Ramon?
Yes, on Scale-Up. If I may, on the first question on Africa, what can we do to, you know, get it more on people's mind? This is precisely why Jérôme has been talking to you this morning. As Christel said, we also have growth in Europe. Look at the EBITDA growth in European countries. I mean, it's very strong. We've growth with infrastructures, with growth with cyber security. But Africa may be a bit more difficult to get in people's minds, so this is why Jérôme was there, and I hope it will contribute to a better understanding of value creation in Africa. On the question on Scale-Up, you know, we are starting, Christel is starting a new plan. There is a new strategy. There is a new perspective.
I think it was clearer to stop the clock. We have in the pocket, you know, what has been achieved under the previous plan. We started from EUR 13.8 billion in direct costs. In end 2022, it was down to EUR 13.2 billion, minus EUR 700 million net costs. It's clear and simple. we start again 31st of December 2022. Looking ahead until 2025, we have a new basis of EUR 11.8 billion costs. The basis has been enlarged to some direct costs for distribution in Europe. we say we are going to reduce this in net terms by EUR 600 million. it will be EUR 11.2 billion at the end of a period. It's extremely clear. There is another important difference, we said. Energy costs are out of the basis.
It was in the previous one because it is managed aside. As you know, we had, I think, quite a proactive hedging policy, which helped us to mitigate the hike in energy costs. I think the group was also quite safe on this on this side. It's very clear. We start again a new process, and it is the same percentage, 5% of total decrease reported to the basis we were looking at in the previous plan and in the next plan.
We are back on the ground with Nicolas.
Thank you. Nicolas Cote-Colisson for HSBC. May I ask you another question on Africa? Would you consider opening the capital to either local investors or to the open market? That could be also a move that helps you to hedge from, I mean, against some geopolitical risks in some of your countries. Maybe to follow up on acquisitions, given Ramon mentioned the third-party capital inorganic growth, what kind of criteria are you looking at or considering when you are scanning opportunities in Africa especially? Thank you.
I think, I mean, and Jerome will be able to complement, but we already have local investors in many of our countries in Africa. That can be local private investors. I mean, in Senegal, we have the Senegal government. Sometime it's IPO that could be like in Ivory Coast. That's our model. It's not the case in every country. In some countries, indeed, we own 100% the operation. It's really case by case. Indeed, being local in all our operations in Africa is absolutely key for our success. At the same time, the creation few years back, three years, five years back, of our headquarter for Orange in the East and Africa in Morocco was also a significant milestone to then trigger further efficiency.
We manage not only the countries, but also the region as a whole, with some shared services centers and a lot of mutualization that creates value. That's also something we look at, because when we consider acquiring new operations, we want to make sure that we create synergies by including them in our portfolio. I think as Ramon reminded, we have not done any acquisition since 2016. But we've been reviewing many opportunities, we are always looking at. I mean, it's risk reward, value creation, so very, very pragmatic, and we will continue to do the same.
Andrew for the next one.
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Hi, it's Andrew from Goldman Sachs. Christophe, you've talked a lot about execution, but if we think about the biggest drag on the whole sector, you know, over the last two decades, and the reason for a lack of investor appetite in the space, it's been regulation, right? It's basically dragged down returns. And, you know, as you join the group, we're looking at returns of 6%. You know that you're not creating value today, but neither is most of the rest of the sector. The question was just, you, in one of your earlier slides, in the first presentation, you talked about maybe regulation and government support improving. And I guess what everyone's trying to get their heads around is exactly how practically does that become a reality.
You know, you mentioned net neutrality and big tech paying for access. It's quite hard to see how that actually gets implemented. I wonder if you could talk about what you've seen, you know, in your early days in the role to give you confidence that we may get that turnaround, which would allow all that execution to actually generate value creation in the future?
I mean, that's a very important question. Maybe I'd like to reinforce the reason why. I mean, when I joined the company, my first reaction was, we cannot leave this business that is so essential for the future, for resilience, for strategic independence. How come we have an entire industry that has tried to diversify to find growth? There's something wrong in the model. That's why we have to make sure that we create value from that business. Obviously as Orange, and that's all the presentation of this morning, it's obviously next generation infrastructure itself. Regulation is indeed important.
That's why I think with all our European peers, there's now, I mean, whether it's at Europe or actually in some countries, people realize what's happening, which is that some traditional operators cannot invest in infrastructure anymore. Obviously many infrastructure funds are coming to invest or to acquire those infrastructure, and obviously tech players are capturing some value. What's gonna happen in 5-10 years to that if we actually don't know who owns that infrastructure? That is again, so critical for security and resilience of our world in Europe. I think this is a political debate. This is not for us as companies to decide. This is where we all have a strong voice as, I mean, European leaders on we need to change something.
I think the consultation that the European Commission is now launching or is about to launch will at least try to get some facts and data on this. Again, the objective is to make sure that we can, for the long term, continue to invest in our infrastructures and understand who owns those infrastructure. When it comes to the evolution of our industry, I think that's something. Very often people ask me, "Okay, what's the next big thing in our industry?" I think the most exciting journey ahead of us is not exactly the next big thing that we're gonna launch. You know, I was at Catalyson, so I've been the one promoting 2G, 3G, 4G and so on.
The next big thing is that our industry, that is actually an old industry carrying four mobile networks and two fixed networks currently in France, will become younger, more agile next generation. As we decommission 2G and 3G, as we decommission copper, as we get software infrastructure, as we become actually an open network that actually has a lot of data and critical assets. When you talk to big techs, I mean, obviously cloud computing, all the trends that we discussed this morning with Aliette. I mean, big techs hardly need our infrastructure for their services to operate as promised to enterprise customers or citizens. There will be a balance.
If it's not an economic balance, at some point, and already happening, when they need edge computing, that's for us to capture the value that sits in this evolution. There's going to be a lot of other evolution coming in that will go in the direction of. We've talked a lot about cloud infrastructure, but cloud infrastructure is nothing without the network to connect to the people. There will be a lot more discussion between the tech world that sits on top of networks and evolution that will sit in our networks. The value, one way or another, will evolve in the next 10 years. Again, the potential that sits just under us by becoming younger, I mean, just simplifying our network et cetera, is just enormous.
That's a journey to 2030. That's maybe not to 2025 completely, even though we will, as Michaël presented this morning, decommission 2G and then decommission, started already copper, et cetera. That's a 2030 journey. That's enormous potential of efficiency. I mean, as we add software on top of it, a lot more agile ways of, I mean, operating our networks and providing even more personalized services to our customers.
We'll move to Russell and then back to Georgios. Russell first, please. Over there, on your right.
Thank you. Yeah, it's Russell from New Street Research. Two quick questions, please. The first, could you just remind us the energy delta for 23, please, at the group? How will that play out in 24? I mean, obviously, wholesale prices have come down, I presume it'll be a nice tailwind from a headwind, but I guess it all depends on your hedging, et cetera. If you could just tell us. Thank you. The second question is just on the CapEx. You've been very clear, 15% of sales, 23-25. In 2025, what proportion of that is FTTH? In other words, you know, in absolute terms, can CapEx fall further in 26, 27 because there's more FTTH CapEx to roll off?
In absolute terms, is the level in 2025, you know, what we should sort of assume the group is going to spend going forward? Thank you.
On energy, and I think we said it already, I mean, 2023, it's a EUR 300 million increase of cost on which we are almost fully covered.
Yes.
97% or 98%.
97.
97%. For 2024, actually we continue with our hedging policy, as we mentioned this morning. We have currently above 50%, I think 60%.
60%.
already covered at actually prices that are, that are, I mean, I don't know if they are good or bad actually, but that's something that we monitor. We use the current lower price of energy, of course, to take some more hedging position for 2024. We've only covered 60% in 2024 and 50% in 2025 to keep some room. Now I know your question is what's the upside or what's the downside moving forward? There are upsides or there are downside. The reason why in our cost reduction plan we did not include energy is because we know that we need to follow the price of energy specifically as standalone, I would say, initiative to continue to monitor.
First, to consume less energy, because the best energy is the one we don't consume. Of course, second, to buy, to buy with certainty at prices that are available. There may be some upsides indeed, but.
Yes. I think so.
Yeah.
I think we can say so.
Yeah.
I think we can say so.
For 2024.
In 2024, the average price for hedging is currently significantly, in fact, lower than 2023. For those who know France, there is a beautiful system called ARENH, which of course is contributing to our efforts because we are eligible at a very high level, given the profile of our electricity consumption to the ARENH French system. Yes, there is more upside on this side.
I'm sorry. I mean, when you say upside, do you mean upside to guidance or are you assuming within guidance, you know, that you do get this tailwind from energy?
The risk is well under control it means.
Within guidance to be even clearer.
Let's move to Georgios.
There was a question on CapEx and fiber. I think, I mean, beyond 2025, of course we will continue. I mean, the CapEx on fiber that we will have once we've massively deployed the networks will be customer connection. We will have some fiber CapEx, but it will be linked to commercial increase and so to revenues.
Georgios.
Thank you. It's Georgios from Citi. Thank you for your presentation. I've got three questions. The first one is on TOTEM. You mentioned the build to suit, the contribution of assets from the rest of the group, then finally consolidation. I just wanted to maybe touch on the latter. Do you have any preference for in-market consolidation with synergies or cross-border would be preferable? Then, just wanted to understand how you envisage the control of this business, because obviously having it on balance sheet while you're consolidating may be suboptimal for the group leverage targets. The second question is on business and more in the mid to long term in terms of the applications and the services you wanna provide to your customers.
I understand cybersecurity is something every telco more or less has invested in. There are other services perhaps that you need to provide. Some of your peers, maybe the other main continental peers is not investing in acquiring these kind of services, more acts as a platform for partners to offer. Some other companies decided to make investments. I'm curious how you are thinking about Orange moving in that direction. The final question is on pricing. You are raising prices in most markets, not all markets are the same. I'm just curious if the decisions were made at local level, particularly in Spain, or whether it's a group decision to raise prices. Thank you.
I'll start by the last question because it's the easiest. I don't have a big computer in my office where I can push the prices. No, no, of course, it's being made at local level, and that's something that we monitor very closely, of course, at group level because that is so important in this current inflationary environment. It's really managed by our country leaders because we follow very closely, obviously, and every market is different, as you mentioned. Sometimes we are leaders, sometimes we are followers, and within a market we have different brands and different positions. This is very granular and local know-how that helps us do that. Again, tapping and leveraging customer satisfaction, NPS strong, and network quality.
My preference for any deal, whether it's actually TOTEM or I think it's the one that creates most value. It's not, I mean, in market, out market. Again, as we said this morning, our first value creation opportunity for TOTEM is coming from organic growth. We will obviously consider opportunities. And we are approached all the time by many players who would like to do things. Let's be very clear, and I think that was our message this morning. As an operator, our assets in infrastructure have a lot of value because we have invested on infrastructure that are next-gen ready. And there are...
I mean, we can say, and some people say, I mean a tower is a tower, but it's also the engineering, the fiber, the energy connection and all of that. Being an operator, we bring some value actually, and that's why some investment partners look to investing or partnering with us on this type of opportunity. The one thing that is very important as well is that I mean, I do not consider that those infrastructure are not strategic being an operator. That does not mean that we need to own, as we said earlier, 100% of our infrastructures.
When it comes to TOTEM, these assets are strategic for us, that does not mean we would not consider consolidation opportunities, but always making sure that we have the control of the strategic nature because those assets are again critical for our business, especially in the long term. There was a question for Aliette, I think.
Yeah. There was a question on business and the way I understood the question is, where we will position Orange Business in the future and where is the potential for value creation. I mean, if you look at how what an office was looking like with employees a few years ago, you had a desk and you had a fixed phone and you had a big computer connected with an Ethernet cable. Applications were hosted somewhere in the data center in the basement. From a security perspective, we had what we called perimeter security. We were putting firewalls all around the sites of the office. Employees were all working on site. What's happening today and what will increasingly happen in the future is that employees are working from anywhere.
We see that the applications are hosted everywhere in the cloud and most enterprises they have a multi-cloud hybrid strategy. We see that managing the security in this context and managing the connectivity, which is very often, you know, a mix of Wi-Fi, fixed connectivity, 4G or 5G is becoming very complex. The way we see ourselves, and that's why I described us as a network and digital integrator, is that in the future we will be integrating all those pieces and our sweet spot and where there is tremendous market value. It's at the crossroads between what I call those three C's, so connectivity, cloud and cybersecurity. We are in a world which is increasingly complex, both from a technological but also from a regulatory or geopolitical standpoint for our enterprise customers.
I think we are moving into a new phase where for them, if they want to master, if they want to control their digital transformation, both from a user experience but also from a budget standpoint, they will need to have partners orchestrating those pieces together. Today when you have something like a device like this one which is not connecting to Wi-Fi, or you are entering into a room to do a video, and it's not properly working because the video is not synchronizing properly with others that are on different devices and so on. Very often, our enterprise customers in those situations, they don't know who to call because you don't know if you need to call for the equipment manufacturer, for the network provider, for the cloud provider, for the integrator who installed the Wi-Fi and so on.
Having an integrator or an orchestrator able to maximize their user experience has tremendous value for our customers, and that's.
Exactly our sweet spot, and that's where we are very good. We are today the worldwide leader in next gen virtualized connectivity. We will leverage this to become the, you know, leading, network and digital integrator.
Jacob, next one.
Hi, Jakob Bluestone from Credit Suisse. I've got three questions, please. Firstly, there's been some comments recently from your predecessor, Thierry Breton, recently talking about a cross-border consolidation in the telco industry. Can you maybe just share with us what you think about cross-border? Do you think it makes sense or not? Secondly, there's also been, I'd say some fairly hostile commentary recently from Arcep in the press. Can you maybe just help us understand what's going on there? Is there a sort of deterioration in the relationship? Is this just the press kind of sensationalizing? Obviously maybe linking that to Andrew's question earlier about is regulation getting better or worse? Thirdly, on Orange Business, Ramon, you talked about how there are no taboos in your sort of capital allocation and portfolio thinking.
I guess on Orange Business specifically, do you expect the ROCE to exceed the WACC in 2025? If not, why did you go for a restructuring instead of an exit? Thank you.
On the cross-border consolidation in the telecom industry, I think at least so far, the telecom industry value creation came from national consolidation. Our strategy came from a convergent strategy with Belgium, Romania in the past and the proposed deal in Spain. The real synergies that you get cross-borders, some of it we have already with Dutch Telecom. Our JV BuyIn creates tremendous synergies because we have procurement synergies. When it comes to our market today, as long as we have 25, 26, 27 countries with as many regulators, as many auction for spectrums, et cetera, our markets will remain local. Finding synergies in the long run, there may be with virtualization of networks, and we are implementing more managing in a more mutualized way our networks, so we are implementing it.
The first synergies, I would say, they sit for us within Europe, across our countries, before thinking about indeed creating synergies through M&A transactions. On the Arcep situation. Actually, I mean, I won't comment on the media, but I mean, we've always been discussing with Arcep all the time. It's just that the current debate that we have is that we believe... I mean, we have a strong position on the number of rights that we have. And when we believe that the regulation does not apply and that we just defend our rights. That's why we are using, I would say, a legal path towards to something that I hope will end up through a normal negotiation as we've done all the time, actually.
We have to stand our firm to defend our rights as a company and the value that sits in our infrastructures.
If I may, Christel, just on Arcep, I think we have a complex relation that's normal for an incumbent with the regulator, but we are on speaking terms. I think it's important also to mention that we respect what they want to increase the rollout of infrastructure for sure, but we also expect them to integrate the financial and the economics behind it. That's the two disagreement we have on the fiber rollout and on the pricing of the unbundling on the civil engineering. That's, that's the topic we have today, but we are still on speaking term with Arcep.
You want to take either ROCE question for OBS.
I can take. You can take the ROCE. I mean, why no exit? Because our enterprise business is a core business for us, and I do, and I am convinced that we do have, as Aliette explained, I think enterprises definitely need our services moving forward. While we need to go through the transformation, actually, there's tremendous potential. Indeed, we asked ourselves the question, should we indeed just milk the cow? That would be a cash cow business. That's what we learn. No, we do want to invest because, I mean, security, connectivity, resilience are needs that we are uniquely positioned to serve moving forward. That's why we are making the decision to indeed transform this business, to position it, to reposition it on what it should be for what customers expect.
Jacob, if I can complement the specific question, will the ROCE be above WACC according to our plan in 2025? Not yet, it can change rapidly because as you know, it's a very low.
Asset
CapEx activity, it's extremely sensitive to the EBIT evolution. As Aliette and Christel said, we plan, we put on the slide that we plan a rebound in EBITDA in 25. Aliette said at the latest in 25. One question here, and then Frederic. Alexandre
Hello, this is Fernando from Santander. Just two questions. The first one is related with the legacy savings, no? In that sense, I would like to know which is in your current guidance 2025 is included in terms of legacy savings. More particularly trying to understand the potential of the copper decommission in France, which is the current cost that you are having in your accounts in your copper network here in France to understand, as I said, the potential savings from the decommission are making the networks younger. The second point is also related with regulation. Thinking on the on the on Spain, you have already communicated the filing. Just trying to understand what is your current position ahead of the potential remedies, no?
In that sense, if there is any red line from your side, what is the first views on the front, regarding the potential remedies to appear in the bill?
On the copper decommissioning in France, and coming back to the question on regulation. The reason why we have also an open, I would say, dialogue with ARCEP, and the reason why we plan a normal increase of the wholesale price for copper, is because we will have customers connected to our copper networks until we fully decommission, which is 2030. From a political standpoint, we are being expected to continue to invest and to maintain that copper network to make sure that the quality of service of our millions of customers today who are still using this copper network is good.
That's the debate that we have with ARCEP, which is that even though we've been investing massively on fiber and we invest massively, or we invest on 5G and new technologies, we continue to invest on our copper network. There will be savings, but there's also continued investment. That's the debate that we have currently with ARCEP, with a very clear position, which is that if we are not being paid the economic value of the investment we make, we have no other option but to reduce the investment that we make in our copper networks, and which will have an impact on the quality. On the legacy savings beyond 25, actually, it's fully...
I mean, it's not in our plan because the plan stops in 2025, and that's something that we are working on. Again, it will depend. As you know, we started the decommissioning process with a very operational pilot in France in several regions, because we obviously. It's not only dependent on us, it also depends on our competitors, on local communities, on customers. That's a framework that we're currently working on to define, knowing that indeed the real decommissioning commercial stop of copper line commercial activity will be in 2025. It's probably too early to say because a lot of parameters will depend on the pace, on what we discuss, what we decide.
Again, we will make sure that we protect the ability to cover the cost that we have in the long run until we fully decommission the copper network. On Spain, the MásMóvil deal. I think our position is very clear that this deal will create value for customers in Spain, we see no reason why there would be any remedy. We are just notified. Let's be clear. We know that this deal is going through phase I. It's probable, clear it will go to phase II. It's really too early to say. Again, our position is very clear. The combination with MásMóvil in Spain, remember that Spain is a market that's highly convergent. More than 80% of customers in Spain are convergent customers, you know that.
This deal will create ability for the JV to invest in infrastructure. The value really sits from the synergies between MásMóvil and Orange and will create value in the end for the customers in a market that's highly competitive, as you know, because there are a lot more players in Spain than we see in most other countries in Europe.
Alexandra, then we will move to the other side.
Bonjour. Alexandre Roncier, Bank of America. I'll just like to come back to CapEx and in particular in France. I think over the past few years, there's been a lot of volatility in co-financing. I'll just like to come back on, you know, maybe be a bit more granular over the next few years on what does your guidance assume? How much co-investing do you have left in 2025? What's the net? Equally, is the volatility the reason why we don't have a clear absolute guidance on CapEx decline and just maybe a relative one? Thank you.
Indeed we don't provide granular CapEx because, first, our total CapEx is a lot more than just fiber. We mentioned fiber and copper, but it's also 5G, 4G, and it's also IT. There's a lot into it. And we don't want to give a very detailed, I would say, CapEx decline guidance as long as we will create value through cash flow growth, and we are very clear on this 15% stream on CapEx, which means that it's also a good incentive because the entire company knows that if we grow our revenues, we will be able to invest more.
Do you want?
Always within this guidance of 15%. Yeah.
If you want me to I know. In terms of co-financing, we, I think you are able to follow the story. You know that we had a EUR 5 billion bucket to invest roughly one point
I would say 1.2, 1.3 remains available. That after 2025, our expectation was that there would be roughly EUR 500 million yet available. It all depends on, you know, what our competitors decide to do. They are renting or they are co-financing. It's not in our hands. We know the buckets. We have an expectation, et cetera. Then all the other pieces are there. I think it's a good question to ask all the details. I would just allow myself to tell you that we have been delivering our commitments on CapEx. We are comfortable with what consensus is expecting for 2023 regarding CapEx, which is, as we say in the guidance, a strong decrease.
We're also comfortable with the fact that we can maintain this kind of, level, which is significantly lower than the previous year over the next years. When we said that we would be back around 15% of CapEx to sales ratio, this is where we are roughly in, 23, as we said, and we said we would continue, and we are going to stick to this, and it's fully embedded in the plan, and we know how.
On the other side, yeah.
Yes, thank you. Good morning. Toba Kudri from Brown Garnier. Two questions, please. One on the long-term incentive plan from the management. I believe that the organic cash flow generation objective was accounting for 50% of the previous plan. Is it still the same? Can you, can you drive us through the, the main, let's say, items of the, of the plan, of the incentive plan for the management? Second question, I would like to hear you on innovation, which is something that we talked about innovation in the, in the network, but I would be interested to see how you view innovation in the sector and at Orange, obviously, in particular, because we see that it's rather difficult to bring innovation to the market for a telecom operator.
You mentioned the stopping of connected home. How do you see the potential of innovation at Orange? I'd be interested to hear you about that. Thank you very much.
Thank you. On the long-term incentive, actually, it's unchanged. We keep the same 50% incentive on the organic cash flow indeed. On potential of innovation, so I think the one thing, what is clear, but that's true for Orange, that's true for industry, that's true for most industries, I would say, we need to have a very open approach to innovation. When it comes to innovation in our core know-how, obviously we have teams that are working on, I mean, next generation of Wi-Fi, how to improve home LAN, how to create, I mean, 5G new networks. I mean, these type of innovation, obviously, which is very core for us, we do it in-house and we have teams and Michael will be able to complement on it.
Naturally speaking, what we do more and more, first of all, is that we work with our peers in Europe as well, because there are a number of innovation areas where we just simply cannot succeed unless we work as one industry. We have a number of initiative with our peers in Europe around, I mean, opening our networks, collaboration, whether it's. That's something that our industry has done forever, but we've done it traditionally through standards, which is good because the standards in the end create the scale for adoption. What we see with standards is that it tends to be too slow for the pace that's needed today. We have actually a forum where we work with few of our other European peers on innovation on a very active basis on a number of topics.
Stay tuned, because I'm sure in Barcelona we will make a few announcements. Of course, we also work with startups and we have Orange Ventures investing in startups and the value we bring obviously to startups, we need to be very clear, and that's where the strategies are. What are our strategy moving forward and where do we want actually to tap into open innovation models to create value. It's true that we, in the past at least, we've been probably too much into a make approach while we need to be a lot more into a systematic, I would say, make by your partner approach. The world is anyway open, so we need to partner and that's what we do and that we will do more and more.
I don't know if, Michaël, you want to complement.
Yes. Just one word on innovation. First, we innovate all the time and what are the goals of our innovation? They probably have changed a little bit. Today we're focusing on innovation with positive impact. That's a big focus for us. How can we provide our services that are green, that are responsible? This is about eco design. This is about all what we do on the Green ITN that allows us to save energy in our network and IT. This is an important part of innovation. The second part is how do we leverage AI in particular for all our network efficiency, our customer relation, our processes. This is also an important element.
We focus innovation where it matters for our customers at the home, especially for home LAN, which is a very important part and expectation for our customers. About business, B2B, we have discussed that with on-demand services, with agile services. This is the next battle that we need to win. We are too slow as an industry and we need to be agile also to connect our customers and to offer on-demand connectivity and for customer relation. I would not have said differently than Chris. We had been too much in the past in the make philosophy. This industry for services is about scale.
Here we definitely focus much more on partner. It can be different kind of partnership, it can be with different players, with our peers, with the big techs, with startups. That's what we do to bring innovative services to our customer, and that's our role. We are the entry point to the digital world for our customers, and that's what we want to focus on.
Let's be back to London with, Jerry, and we'll come back. Operator, please.
We'll now take our next question from Jerry Dellis at Jefferies. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning. Thank you for the presentation. I have two questions, please. For the France perimeter, you're guiding to slightly negative revenue and EBITDA development over the next three years. Thinking about 2023, I guess you face sort of cost inflation headwinds, perhaps on the group wage perimeter, which is about a EUR 7 billion perimeter, and also related to energy costs. If those cost inflationary items aggregate to maybe EUR 300 million-EUR 400 million in 2023, what would be some of the sort of offsetting factors at the EBITDA level, please? Currently, as I see it, consensus is modeling France EBITDA down 1% in 2023 and then stable in 2024. Are you comfortable with consensus on France' EBITDA forecasts?
My second question has to do with the enterprise activity, please. You talk obviously about stabilizing EBITDA in 2025. Two questions, please. Do you believe you'd be able to stabilize EBITDA organically or will it depend on an M&A contribution? If so, are you able to give us some scale of the potential sort of M&A budget that you have in mind? I appreciate it's sensitive, but it is a sort of a CapEx light item. Thank you.
On the second, I mean, the guidance does not include any M&A. The plan is to come back to, I mean, turn around, come back to profitable EBITDA in 2025 without M&A, except as we mentioned, some bolt-on for cybersecurity. Again, our EUR 1.3 billion trajectory for cyber does not embark any budget for large M&A, because that's something that we would consider. As we said, the current plan is based on the pro forma activities that we have today. On the France EBITDA, indeed, as we said, over the course of the plan, we will have a slightly negative EBITDA trajectory in France with two different trends, I mean very different trends. Retail growth at 2%-4% excluding PSTN, and then the trend on wholesale, which we discussed extensively.
In 2023, it's exactly the same, the same trend. We have on one side, I mean, a successful engine with retail. We continue indeed to the decline as we showed on the graph this morning with wholesale, we continue our efficiency programs as we've done in the past 10 years, 15 years. I mean, I look at Fabien and we have many of those. Remember, as we mentioned as well, Ramon can come back to it, we have our massive early retirement program with 7,600 employees, I mean, retiring, which creates also a massive, I would say, trigger of internal efficiency and reorganization and working on our support functions, et cetera. That's what's supporting.
Now on the specific guidance, I think we think that the consensus is achievable. As we insisted this morning, the focus on organic cash flow growth is the focus, and we are very clear on our CapEx trajectory and the achievement of our fiber deployment in France, which will sustain the organic cash flow growth that we expect in France in 2023 and the years after.
Let's come back to Kevala here.
Thank you. It's Kevala from Citi. Three slightly different questions. Just going back on the wage inflation point. I know you're about to start the process with the unions now, I suspect. What's the argument you're gonna say? Obviously they're gonna come back with quite aggressive demands. I'd love to hear from your perspective, what are the counter arguments against that? Secondly, on OBS, we've seen lots of telcos try and restructure enterprise services. One of the things that people underestimate in that process is the amount of legacy and the headwinds from that. Can you give us an idea of how much of that revenue base is legacy, and how do you expect that to evolve in the next one to two years? Finally, on cross-border M&A, there's a theme that's emerging. I suspect Mr.
Breton will talk about it at Barcelona. Love to hear your perspective, but particularly because if I take away your simple plan, in my head, the growth drivers that you're talking about become less domestic, less regional, and much more scalable.
Therefore, the future growth drivers lend themselves more to M&A than they have done in the past. I'd love to get your perspective on that.
The first question on how do we cope with inflation and the negotiation, I mean, and the situation for our employees. That's something that's very important for us because we do need to have very engaged employees. That's a process that we have in every country through negotiation. We've implemented a number of measures, especially targeting low salary level employees to make sure, because obviously they are the first one to suffer from inflation. In most countries we had some specific action targeting this category of employees. Again, it's a negotiation that we have in most countries.
Remember that most governments as well are putting in place different schemes to support enterprises in this context of inflation, which obviously we tap into from one country to another. Again, and then the negotiation that we have ongoing, for instance, in this country, which is not concluded yet, but which was started. It's a negotiation and really we do want to make sure that our lower level salary, I mean, lower salary level employees get what's needed to make sure that they can cope with the situations. We implemented, for instance, end of last year, a specific bonus, one time bonus for them. Again, it's a negotiation, so too early to conclude.
We have obviously planned in our trajectory, financial trajectory, the inflation that's actually the IMF inflation in a way to project moving forward for the three years. On OBS, I think the reason why, as Aliette presented this morning, we have this reset is exactly because we know there's a legacy business that's declining, we cannot build a plan for the next three years without projecting ourself with this decline. That's what's included in the plan. We do plan a continued decrease of this legacy business.
Maybe to add on this, we know that today for Orange Business, we have still 56% of our business, which is what I would call core business, not necessarily legacy business, but core business. 44%, which is IT and IS. As Christel said, the way we've built our strat plan for the coming years is that we've very carefully looked at the market forecast on each of the legacy segments. We've made sure that the hypothesis we've taken are fully consistent with the biggest analyst and the Gartner and IDC of the world on those segments.
We know that the most sensitive part for us is the voice PSTN business in France, and that we will still in 2025 have a bit more than EUR 100 million of gross margin on this segment. There will still be this existing legacy business, but we are very carefully monitoring and modeling this in the plan.
On the cross-border M&A, I think we've discussed it this morning. I won't comment on any specific. Again, the synergies that we have today with the Telecom Italia buying JV are real synergies without involving any M&A. You're right to say that with the technology, with softwarization of networks, there should be more synergies cross borders. As I said earlier, we will first make sure we implement them between our operations in Europe before thinking of M&A deals to create value on top. Again, it's really not on the 25 horizon that I see massive change on value creation through cross-border type of deals.
I think we have a last question in London. Maybe could we move copyright, please?
Thank you. We'll now take our next question from Adrian at Romania Financial Newspaper. Thank you.
Hello from Bucharest. This is Adrian Stanciu from the business daily newspaper Ziarul Financiar in Romania. Thank you very much for the presentation. Mr. Fernandez, greetings from Bucharest. Happy to see you again. Christel and everyone else, also happy to talk to you. We are looking forward to meet you offline. Now, three short questions. Could you please dive in on the market conditions and financials in Romania in 2022? You mentioned briefly the need of impairment, we like to hear more. What can you share about your plans for Romania in this year and the following regarding CapEx, price increases, maybe layoffs, or on the contrary, recruitment? One final question. Looking back, do you see the benefits you were aiming for when you acquired Telecom Romania, the fixed operations? Thank you very much.
Thank you. I mean, I will hand over to Mari-Noëlle who can give more specifics on the plan. I would say, I'm not sure we want to detail any specifics on the CapEx plan for Romania. On the market conditions, of course, they are difficult. As you know, we are now a convergent operator. Like in every country, actually, where we operate, we have a tough competition, and that's true in Romania as well. We are indeed converging TKR and Orange, and we've been now actually through this integration process for more than a year now. We hope to get the benefit of this transaction, and that's the plan that we presented this morning.
Indeed, it's true that the we as part of our 2022 results, we booked an impairment of more than EUR 700 million, EUR 789 million, actually, on our Romanian operations linked to, on one side, a business plan that has evolved, taking into account the ongoing market situation as well as an increase in the in the WACC because of the Eastern Europe situation. I don't know, Mari-Noëlle, if you want to complement on the.
No, on the plan by itself, we're working now for, you know, more than a year on OROC, Orange Romania Communications . The ultimate game is to merge these two companies. We are starting to work with the Romanian government, who issues a, you know, a request for, you know, people which we will be able to work starting maybe next month, in order to, you know, deliver all the synergies that we were having in the plan. The competitive situation is not an easy one in Romania, like everywhere. We're also, you know, discussing with the authorities and the regulation about, you know, our capability to benefit from a more open fiber network from some competitors.
This will be a ongoing discussion for for the next weeks and months. But the team as itself is now, you know, fully merged in the same building, Tandem, as you know, in Bucharest. We are really delivering one strategy for our customers, one strategy for NPS, one strategy for our network, and this is really the beginning in 2023.
Okay. I think the capital market day with no extra time for question means people look happy. Maybe, Christel, will you make a short word of conclusion?
One word of conclusion. Well, thanks a lot first for. I mean, thank you for joining us this morning. I hope you understood that not only we have a very solid guidance for 2023, but we have also real organic cash flow growth value creation in front of us. That's everything that we'll now focus on executing. Thanks again.