Good morning. Thank you for being here, and thank you for those of you who are connected. I'm really pleased to be here with the entire Leadership Team of Orange. A strategic plan is both a demanding exercise and a decisive moment. It aligns our ambition, focuses our resources, and above all, sets a clear direction with confidence. It's also an exciting milestone that mobilize the energy of our talented teams. Three years ago, we launched Lead the Future. In a challenging environment for our industry and for the world, we will review our progress. We streamlined and refocused the Group, improved efficiency and agility, and delivered on the commitments we set. In short, we are today much stronger than three years ago across all dimensions.
Our new plan is anchored on three core convictions. Connectivity is more essential than ever, as our industry responds to ever-growing data demand, technology shifts, rising cyber threats, and high expectations for trust, security, and resilience. Trust is the currency of the future. In an uncertain world, it underpins customer loyalty, employee engagement, and partner collaboration. Orange brings distinctive assets, an iconic brand, a broad and loyal customer base, world-class infrastructure, and a solid balance sheet and talented teams. This is the overall context in which we are presenting this morning, Trust the Future, our new strategic plan. Let me say a few words about the leadership team, the team that executed our Lead the Future plan. This team is highly engaged, recognized for its expertise and its track record, and brings diverse experience in the telecom industry, as well as other sectors, both in France and abroad.
You will hear from many of them throughout today's presentation and Q&A. Our main speakers will be Laurent Martinez, our CFO, whom all of you already know, Aliette Mousnier-Lompré, CEO of Orange Business, Jérôme Hénique, who successfully led Orange Africa/Middle East until last June and took over Orange France, Yasser Shaker, who was successfully leading Orange Egypt and succeeded Jérôme to lead Orange Middle East and Africa, and Meinrad Spenger, Meini, the founder of MásMóvil, who is now the CEO of MasOrange. Together, we'll give you a perspective on our strategy at group level before focusing on its implementation across our various businesses. Of course, Laurent will update you on our financial trajectory and capital allocation before we turn to our 2026 and 2028 guidances. We plan to allocate more than one hour for the Q&A session.
I will not be reading the standard disclaimer typically associated with this type of presentation. You can refer to it in the presentation available on our website. Just one important clarification regarding our presentation: all our 2028 ambitions assume full reconsolidation of MasOrange, unless otherwise specified. As you know, we are expecting a closing of the transaction in H1 2026. Let me start with an overview on our strategy. Where do we stand today? Orange has strong assets, and we serve a growing base of over 340 million customers in 26 countries in Europe, Africa, Middle East, as well as our B2B customers worldwide. With our committed teams, we can leverage the power of our strong brand and our undisputed leadership in connectivity.
With close to 100 million fiber-connectable homes, 5G available in 100% of our countries in Europe, and 4G covering more than 80% of the population in Africa/Middle East, these are strong assets. Our global scale enabled us to deliver more than EUR 40 billion in revenues and EUR 2.8 billion in free cash flow, all in in 2025, as presented yesterday, and we foresee a significant step up moving forward. Leveraging our strength has been our guiding principle behind the execution of our Lead the Future plan. Over the past three years, we have actively and successfully transformed Orange to make it stronger, simpler, and better, and we have delivered on all our financial and extra-financial commitments. We are stronger. Over the period, we have reinforced our leadership positions across all our geographies.
We successfully created MasOrange, the leading operator in Spain. We expect to close our full acquisition of this operation in H1, which will make Spain our second largest market in Europe. We are committed to national consolidation. As you know, I continue to advocate Europe to review its regulatory framework, as we believe a strong digital and telco ecosystem is essential to enhance competitiveness in Europe. In this context, we submitted a joint offer to acquire a significant part of Altice activities in France. Over the past three years, we achieved double-digit growth in Africa/Middle East, and Orange Cyberdefense continued to gain market share. Our strategy helped us reaffirm our leadership in Net Promoter Score, a key indicator of customer satisfaction. We also reinforced our infrastructure leadership. We completed FTTH deployment, especially in France. We are simpler.
The strategic journey has allowed us to streamline our operations and refocus on our core businesses with the exit from OCS and Orange Bank. We have also embarked on a comprehensive transformation of Orange Business. We simplified our group processes to become a more agile and efficient organization, enabling local empowerment and global scale. We are better. In three years, we've over-delivered on our commitments, and our financial performance reflects this transformation. Free cash flow all-in is up EUR 1.2 billion over the last three years, and total shareholder return grew 82% between end 2022 and end 2025. In the meantime, we have kept a very solid balance sheet with a net debt to EBITDA ratio at 1.8x. Moreover, we are growing sustainably. We overachieved our 2025 CO2 commitments on Scopes 1, 2, and 3 .
To conclude, we are laser-focused on execution, and I am convinced that these actions have positioned us even better to accelerate, seize new opportunities, and continue delivering value for all our stakeholders. In a rapidly evolving environment, where connectivity remains critical, we see macro trends as valuable opportunities for Orange to innovate and grow. The changing geopolitical landscape emphasizes the importance of strong local telcos and makes Orange multi-local model more relevant than ever. This context also reinforces the need for in-market consolidation, as I said previously, resilient infrastructures and trusted, secured solution. Technological advancements, especially in artificial intelligence, but also eSIM and satellite, are transforming industries and unlocking new innovative possibilities while creating new customer needs, and you will see that we are seizing these opportunities.
Simultaneously, the rise in digital threats highlights the critical need for safer digital experience and enhanced cybersecurity, presenting both challenges and growth opportunities for us. Finally, the impact of climate change is reinforcing our commitment to environmental objectives and makes the resilience of our services and networks even more essential. By understanding and leveraging these accelerating trends, we are well-positioned to innovate, adapt, and create long-term value through our new plan. Trust at the core and three key ambitions: Customer Intimacy , Innovative Growth, and Excellence at Scale. Trust is at the core of our new strategic plan, Trust the Future. Let's stop for a minute on trust, and it's a key driver of our new plan. As digital complexity and perceived risks rise with rapid innovation, growing cyber risks, fake news, customers and businesses want two things: seamless experience and trust. The winners should deliver both.
Orange starts from a position of strength. Of course, our long-term purpose is clear. As a trusted partner, Orange gives everyone the keys to a responsible digital world. We believe trust is a unique competitive advantage. It means putting trust as a key driver for innovation, marketing, and sales offer. To achieve this goal, we have three strategic ambitions: Customer Intimacy , Innovative Growth, and Excellence at Scale. The foundation of all our actions will be our unwavering commitment to people, society, and the environment. This commitment guides our decisions, shape our culture, and ensure that every step we take contributes to building a sustainable and inclusive digital world. Our people are the engine of Trust the Future, driving innovation, growth, trust, and sustainable performance. Over the past three years, we have renewed our leadership team.
60% of our top 300 managers have changed roles or are newly appointed, and we have attracted talents from the retail, digital, and tech industry. Leadership mobility and our ability to attract top talent are important markers of a dynamic and growth-focused organization. To do so, we are investing more time in succession planning and talent development because we know our people are the greatest asset to shape a resilient and sustainable future. We have also outlined our three values to redefine our culture: responsible, caring, and bold, embedded in managerial practices. Our leadership model now centers on strong team alignment and empowerment. As part of this new culture, we expect open, fact-based discussions that surface issues early and accelerate execution. As I like to say, we are definitely moving from a culture of pleasing the boss to no-sugarcoating style, real issue discussions. Engagement is strong.
In our January internal survey, 81% of our 123,000 employees said they are proud to work for Orange, and 76% are ready to go beyond expectations. Our employee commitment score is up three points. We have great experience and recognized talents in cybersecurity, data, AI, and sales and networks. With upskilling and reskilling, we continue investing in our teams and expanding our skill base. To date, 65,000 colleagues have completed AI training, and we have 3,200 cyber experts. As you know, in France, an agreement was unanimously signed with employee representatives to manage workforce evolution in the next three years. Our commitment also extends to our customers, society, and the planet. These broader responsibilities are at the heart of our purpose. It is built on three pillars: digital trust, economic empowerment, and environment.
Digital trust is built on providing a safer digital experience. Our objective is to provide digital users protection offers in all our countries by 2030. Regarding society and empowerment, we have a strong role to play to reduce gaps and reinforce digital inclusion. We aim to expand coverage in Africa, Middle East, and offer free trainings on digital to more than 6 million people by 2030. Finally, for environment, we are committed to strengthening resilience by adapting our infrastructure and activities to more extreme weather events by partnering with our suppliers and developing circular economy solutions. By 2030, we target to reduce CO2 emissions on all scopes by -45%, and our commitments towards net zero carbon by 2040 remain unchanged. Now, let's take a closer look at how our three ambitions are coming to life through action.
These three strategic ambitions represent the key areas where we will focus our efforts to strengthen our position and accelerate growth. Our first ambition, Customer Intimacy . In mature European markets and high-potential Africa, Middle East, customer expectations are shifting to hyper-personalization. Our ambition is to build a lasting 1-to-1 relationship with every customer. This is what we call Customer Intimacy . We will target all pockets of growth across our geographies while strengthening loyalty and reducing churn to protect and enhance value. To differentiate, we will push through our convergent approach but also go beyond with multi-service offerings that bring together trusted connectivity, entertainment, and essential services, simplifying life at home and on the move. Our execution priorities to deliver this: offer the best connectivity experience, frictionless journeys, and reinvent engagement through high-quality digital experiences that drive frequent, meaningful interactions. Let's go into more details.
To expand our customer base, we will continue to capitalize on the remarkable growth potential of Africa, Middle East, driven by favorable demographic trends and growth of data usage with smartphone and fixed broadband penetration. In Europe, we will continue to grow convergence and FTTH adoption in our customer base. Additionally, we will target under-penetrated segments, for example, diasporas or youth. We will also push through the momentum on B2B in Europe and Africa, Middle East, and expand the customer base. Overall, our ambition is to grow our fixed and mobile customer base by around 40 million by 2028. By then, we should have more than 380 million customers. All those ambitions are also closely tied to our loyalty and engagement strategy. In mature markets, enhancing loyalty and minimizing churn is a key value driver.
For example, in France, a one-point reduction in churn can lead to EUR 40 million in EBITDA improvement. Convergence has proven to be a powerful tool for enhancing loyalty, resulting in France in a churn rate that is five points lower than that of fixed broadband. Our ambition is to keep best-in-class churn and improve churn rates by up to three points in our European countries. To foster loyalty, our strategy is to protect our customer base through strengthened NPS, increasing multi-services beyond convergence, for example, content, device insurance, and financing, which are key drivers of loyalty. We will also launch new loyalty programs. In Europe, we will launch new AI assistants to support our sales teams in recommending the most suitable products, reducing waiting times, and always aiming for first-time resolution.
Our objective is to go towards 100% of customer interactions to be augmented by AI in customer service, as you will hear from Jérôme Hénique later. In France, we target the NPS at 40 by 2028, representing a six-point increase versus 2025, and maintaining the existing gap with our competitors. In Europe and Africa, Middle East countries, we consolidate our leadership on mobile NPS in two-thirds of our geographies. We will reinforce the use of Customer Value Management boosted by AI. What is Customer Value Management ? In simple terms, it is the promise of the right offer at the right time through the right channel for every individual customer. Using Customer Value Management across all channels, we can identify potential churners and promptly, promptly offer retention incentives or hyper-personalized services in order to enhance loyalty.
Reinforcing the use of CVM will also contribute to the last level of our Customer Intimacy ambition, pushing value through increased differentiation. First, we will harness the power of digital to extend the number of touchpoints with our customers through the development of Max it super app in Africa, Middle East, and next-gen applications in Europe. We expect to spread adoption across all our customer base. Additionally, to leverage digital, we plan to develop marketplaces, enriching our range of telecom and electronic products. In Spain, our marketplace is already available. Leveraging on the power of digital and data, we will reach our full upsell and cross-sell potential and capture more value. In Africa, Middle East, we expect to increase 4G and 5G penetration by eight points, reaching 130 million 4G, 5G customers and Max it users by 50 million.
In Europe, leveraging on the power of digital and data, value will come from multi-service offerings such as content, roaming options, or device insurance. Finally, as a trusted operator, we will accelerate the development of digital protection solutions, cybersecurity offers for parents of young people. We'll provide always available connectivity through fixed wireless access or with satellite complementing mobile and broadband networks. Our second ambition, Innovative Growth , involves expanding our growth model to capture opportunities in both B2C and B2B segments, leveraging the power of our brand, our customer base, our extensive data, and best-in-class connectivity. Looking at B2C, as already discussed, we aim to increase the share of multi-services in our revenues. In addition to traditional services that create stickiness and loyalty, we have an existing portfolio of other high-growth, profitable services that have the potential to grow double-digit by 2028.
We plan to accelerate these innovative adjacencies through a dedicated focus with the right organization, the right people, and the right agile decision process. These initiatives include, for Africa, Middle East, Orange Money and Max it, and in Europe, offers such as cybersecurity for consumers, home security, Orange Travel, MVNO for roamers, and international money transfer between Europe and Africa, Middle East. We will also grow new businesses such as telco APIs and ad tech platforms in France and in Spain. As a result, these growth initiatives will contribute more than EUR 500 million of additional revenues by 2028, starting from a level of more than EUR 1 billion in 2025. Moving to B2B, we are the number one telco player for B2B global secure connectivity and cybersecurity services in Europe. We plan to leverage our unique assets with advanced trusted solutions, as Aliette will comment later.
Our ambition is to generate an additional EUR 500 million in revenue, reaching EUR 2.6 billion in trusted B2B revenues by 2028, driven by mid- to high-single-digit growth in cyberdefense, trusted cloud, AI, and the defense and health verticals in France. In addition, we will also build on a strong commercial momentum of IT and integration revenues on our domestic B2B footprint, targeting more than 7% revenue growth on average over the next three years. This includes services such as cloud, cybersecurity, and AI-powered solutions. Innovative Growth will also be driven by the continued management for value of our infrastructure assets. It is worth noting that our portfolio's diversity and scale is quite unique. We are the clear number one in Europe in terms of fiber deployment. We also hold leading positions in towers, ducts and poles, ground stations, and long-distance infrastructures.
Ownership of these assets underpins our strong premium positioning, enables the optimization of Orange risk profile, and offers long-term cash flow generation from anchor tenants such as other telcos, but also hyperscalers and satellite constellations. We will continue to develop the wholesale monetization of these assets. In France, our FTTH monetization ratio stands at 74%, and we expect to increase it by five points by 2028. This ratio is also expected to increase in Europe and Africa, Middle East, respectively, by four and six points by 2028. We will develop dark fiber businesses with at least mid-teens internal return rates. Finally, we expect to grow TOTEM external hosting revenues by 7% on average between 2025 and 2028. To illustrate all those benefits, let's view a short video.
Every digital service relies on a vast physical network, now a strategic asset for both the economy and digital sovereignty. From transport and payments to public services and businesses, everything depends on our network. That is why, for our customer, resilience is no longer an option. Connectivity is the foundation of every digital transformation, and it requires an always-on availability. This comes with a huge amount of investment, technology, and a very efficient service management. With 99% of intercontinental traffic carried by subsea cables, and as AI-driven data flows continue to accelerate, Orange Marine is renewing its fleet to secure operations in an increasingly uncertain geopolitical context.
Every technological dependency creates a vulnerability, be it economical or geopolitical. Our objective is to manage these risks while improving our competitiveness, first, by diversifying our technologies and partners, but as well, by leveraging network softwarization and open source to develop in-house certain network functions. At the same time, rising cloud usage and artificial intelligence are driving demand and reshaping operational models.
We are experiencing a major shift in our operating model. We used to deploy a new equipment for every new customer. Today, with cloud-based technology, we are able, in one click, to deliver a service to a customer on our points of presence around the world. This is, at the end of the day, what matters the most to our customers: the balance between competitiveness, resilience, and innovation. How is this made possible, and how do we stand out? The strategic choice of Orange to retain ownership of its network and ensure stability and resilience.
Let's now move to our third ambition, Excellence at Scale, which reflects our commitment to operational efficiency while leveraging the scale of our group and artificial intelligence. Our networks are, and will remain, the bedrock of our business. We have deployed fiber, 4G, and 5G. We will decommission 2G and 3G, as well as copper in Europe. This will simplify our operating model and generate efficiency and savings. We remain committed to enhancing network resilience. The overall capital intensity of the group will decrease. CapEx will remain disciplined, with allocation decisions increasingly based on value and customer needs. In Europe, CapEx will decrease with the end of the fiber rollout in the continent, while we will continue to invest for growth in Africa, Middle East. We will also enhance our network operating models.
By 2030, the majority of our network control and management functions, along with our connectivity services, will be cloud-based. Additionally, we will integrate satellite and advanced 5G capabilities to deliver augmented resilience against factors such as security and climate hazards. Overall, our CapEx-to-sales ratio will gradually decrease to around 14% by 2028, and even below 14%, excluding Africa, Middle East. Excellence at scale also means the ability to drive technology leadership, leverage and enrich skill centers, as well as work with the best ecosystem of partners. To streamline deployment of offers, boost product innovation, and scale internal needs, we prioritize key group platforms like Orange Money, Cybers ecure, Next Generation Apps, Home Gateway, and a unified cloud platform.
By pooling expertise, we allow every country in the group to benefit from the very best skills and practices provided by our common data and AI hub, our satellite skills center, and others. Thanks to our scale, we can build balanced relationships with the best tech companies. We gain early access to innovations facilitated by our open innovation and open source approach. Our strong presence in the tech ecosystem, including through our Orange Ventures portfolio, also allows us to stay constantly at the forefront of the latest technological advancements, including from startups. Our goal is to further expand AI deployment in every part of our daily operations. Our approach is based on our Data and AI Factory , with 1,500 experts, European and Africa, Middle East data residency, and diverse strategic partnerships.
As of today, we have 65,000 employees trained on AI and 100,000 internal users of Live Intelligence, our internal GenAI platform. In practical terms, we have four main AI domains, where use cases are prioritized through value assessment. In customer experience, AI helps us better personalize interactions and enhance customer engagement through Customer Value Management. In network management, use cases such as preventive maintenance and field operations optimization will contribute to our targeted reduction in mean time to repair. For instance, time to detect and fix could be reduced from hours to minutes when there's no need to send a field technician. AI is also employed to streamline various internal processes, improving efficiency. All jobs across the organization will benefit from AI, from pre-sales job to procurement, legal, or fraud detection. The full potential of AI will require change management and end-to-end transformation.
Finally, AI opens avenues for B2B new revenue streams. All the AI initiatives are projected to generate EUR 600 million in value by 2028, to be compared with the more than EUR 300 million in 2025. Finally, regarding operational efficiency, we will continue to build on the transformation programs launched in the past years and accelerate efforts on newly identified opportunities. First, on procurement, our transformation program, combined with the bargaining power of our JV BuyIn with Deutsche Telekom, will allow us to deliver over EUR 1 billion savings by 2028. Second, we will leverage scale to improve efficiency. We are streamlining our processes and automating wherever possible, especially in France, in the context of the renewed senior part-time plan. Network transformation, real estate optimization, and the deployment of digital solutions will contribute to cost optimization, increased agility, and service quality.
Laurent will develop how all these initiatives translate into our financial trajectory. Before moving to our business overview, starting with Jérôme, CEO of France, a short video to illustrate the benefits of AI for the group.
Artificial intelligence is reshaping how businesses create value, unlocking new sources of growth and efficiency. Its real potential lies in how it's combined with human expertise. Through a balanced partnership between people and AI, built on co-intelligence. There are many opportunities for value with AI. For example, in making our networks more resilient and secure, in generating new revenue streams in markets, especially like Africa, that are really dynamic. Of course, we can also improve the daily work lives of our employees with AI. To demystify AI and make it available for all of our employees, we built a product called Live Intelligence, and we also sell that product externally to our customers. In fact, over 80% of Orange employees have used the product.
In H.R., we are using it for resumes, for job description creation. We are using it for RFP responses. We are using it for contract reading. As AI matures, it's transforming how companies manage customer relationships. Through AI -driven Customer Value Management, operators can move from reactive to proactive engagement, creating value at scale. In this context, Sosh, French digital brand, introduced an AI assistant to support personalized customer interactions. It's the first AI assistant able to understand, respond, and assist Sosh customers 24/7 both by voice but also in writing, to provide a unique and really high-quality customer experience. While AI also enables more efficient, resilient, and optimized network operations, its rapid expansion raises fundamental questions about responsibility, impact, and the choices that come with scale.
Responsible AI is a super important concept for us. There are like three things I'd like to attach to that concept. The first one is to make sure that we only use AI whenever that makes sense. The second one is to use it in the most efficient way, use the most efficient model so that we reduce the immediate impact on the planet. And the third one, let's not forget that AI makes mistakes. So we have to learn to make sure that we can mitigate those risks.
Good morning, everyone. Thank you, Christel. In France, we are, as you know, the undisputed leader in market share, and we are determined to strengthen our position in what we expect to remain a very competitive market. This will be achieved thanks to an unleashed innovation that will allow us to remain best-in-class in NPS, Net Promoter Score and churn, and to accelerate our push-to-value strategy with upsell, cross-sell, and strong growth of multi-service revenues, leveraging our large customer base. We have set some clear objectives in this regard. We are targeting NPS of 40 for the residential market by 2028, up six points from our already best-in-class level in the market. We also expect to reduce our churn in both mobile and broadband. Even so, we have the lowest churn in the French market. What is our roadmap?
As Christel mentioned, delivering the best personalized digital experience for our customers remains a top priority, and we will continue to bring innovation to the market, starting with our next-gen Orange app, embedding AI, and providing seamless and personalized services that will be available soon. As you saw in the video, we will as well deploy an AI assistant for Sosh customers, incorporating the most advanced generative AI technologies, enabling us to offer a unique experience to our customers. We will continue to drive value through upselling and cross-selling, doubling down on adjacent services to connectivity for both B2C and B2B customers, with proven commercial success, such as cybersecurity, advertising and payment services, or home security services, insurance, and subscription VOD, SVOD for video on demand.
Our goal is to increase revenue from these services by over 5% per year on average, between 2025 and 2028. To better cross-sell and respond to evolving customer needs, we will rely on innovation. To this regard, we plan to launch a marketplace in 2026, enriching our range of telecom and electronic products at competitive prices. We will also continue to drive the organization towards next level of operational efficiency, and we are aiming for sustained EBITDA margin improvement and increased operating cash flow over the duration of the plan, supported by continuous OpEx reduction and a strict execution of our efficiency plan. This will come as a result of numerous initiatives, such as the smart use of AI in operations, greater mutualization, and procurement.
Moreover, we will continue to sharply reduce our CapEx, targeting a decrease of over EUR 300 million over the next three years. With over 42 million fiber-connectable households at the end of 2025, we already cover 94% of France, and we have 80% of our broadband customers on fiber, demonstrating the huge success of our fiber strategy while addressing our regulatory obligations. In the coming years, we will focus on the execution of the ongoing copper to fiber migration, with a total of 44 million copper premises to decommission by 2030. This represents a significant operational transition, and we are ready for it. Over the last years, we have tested this process, already decommissioned technically more than 1 million premises, negotiated contracts for copper extraction, and established the engagement model with local communities and all stakeholders.
Let's take a step back and look how it affects our EBITDA between 2025 and 2028. Retail, excluding PSTN contribution, is expected to be broadly stable in a challenging market. The transition from copper to fiber will continue to impact EBITDA in France due to the decline of around EUR 800 million in copper-related revenues over three years, both wholesale and retail. We aim to fully absorb this impact through a combination of operational efficiencies, which represent over EUR 600 million, as well as the resale of copper for incremental circa EUR 200 million. These initiatives are expected to more than offset the decline of copper revenues, leading to a stable plus EBITDA CAGR in France between 2025 and 2028.
Finally, in terms of cash, we expect the copper resale to slightly more than offset the dismantling costs provisioned at the end of 2025. Overall, in a competitive market, our strong leadership and strategy will enable us to deliver stable retail services, excluding PSTN revenue, over the next three years. Amid ongoing copper to fiber migration, we expect a stable plus evolution of EBITDA, with continued improvement in EBITDA margin. With the near completion of fiber rollout in France, we expect a significant reduction in CapEx in the next three years, exceeding EUR 300 million and decreasing the CapEx to sales ratio by two points. We also see opportunities beyond 2028 to further reduce the CapEx intensity. Overall, this will fuel strong growth in operating cash flow at more than +3% CAGR between 2025 and 2028.
Last but not least, for 2026, we aim for a stable plus EBITDA evolution, which is very consistent with our three-year trajectory. I will now leave the floor to Yasser Shaker, CEO of Orange Middle East and Africa. But before that, a quick video introducing the dynamism of this region.
Today, the Middle East and Africa region stands out as one of the most dynamic growth engines in the telecom sector, driven by strong demographics and accelerating digital adoption. In this context, infrastructures remain a key differentiator for operators.
Nous allons continuellement investir dans nos réseaux en accélérant dans les investissements de croissance, dans la fibre, également, la couverture 4G et 5G.
Beyond connectivity, telecom operators have become central players in everyday services. Mobile money, in particular, has transformed access to financial services across the region.
Orange Money simplifie la vie au quotidien. Elle permet d'envoyer de l'argent à tous tes proches, où qu'ils soient, payer ses factures plus facilement sans se déplacer, effectuer tous tes achats sans cash, épargner ou encore obtenir du crédit.
At the same time, operators face a unique mix of challenges and opportunities in the region.
Nous avons une population jeune, donc il faut que nous soyons au rendez-vous de leurs attentes. Pour cela, nous allons utiliser la data et l'IA pour analyser leurs besoins et leur proposer les offres et les services dont ils sont en attente.
From a financial perspective, 2025 marked a milestone for Orange Middle East and Africa, with growth exceeding 12%, margins above 39%, and group now holding a number one position in more than 10 markets.
Right. Good morning. Merci, Jérôme, and I hope you're ready to go with us on a trip to Africa and Middle East, where I'm proud to share our solid performance, track record, and strong growth journey across Africa and Middle East. 2025, in fact, was an outstanding year, where we reached new heights, with revenue up 12.2% and EBITDA up 13.9% year-over-year. Last year alone, we welcomed 14 million new customers to our base, the equivalent of a nation's population. We also strengthened our leadership position as the number one operator in 10 countries across our well-balanced, diversified footprint, with no single country representing more than 15% of our OMEA revenue. I believe the best is still yet to come. Our region has the youngest and fastest-growing population globally.
By 2030, 4G and 5G penetration is expected to increase by around 20 points additionally. Smartphone adoption will also increase by around 30 points. These powerful market dynamics will continue to fuel strong growth in our core business and directly support our ambition to add more than 14 million mobile data users over the next three years, which means, in fact, over one million a month. On top of that, we're targeting to double our fiber customer base by end of 2028. Beyond connectivity, our new growth journey will also focus on accelerating our non-telco growth engine. First, Orange Money, which generated close to EUR 200 billion in transaction value last year, will scale and simplify real-time lendings, payments, and international money transfers. This is particularly powerful in a region where around 45% of the population remains unbanked.
We aim, therefore, over the next three years, to add more than 20 million customers to our Orange Money customer base. When it comes to Max it, our super app, we'll enrich it, enrich in services across gaming, T.V., e-commerce, and advertisement, with an ambition to triple its base by adding more than 50 million users over the next few years, reaching 75 million users in total. In parallel, we'll sustain a double-digit CAGR growth in B2B and achieve a twofold growth in our ICT revenue. Our target, in fact, is to exceed EUR 10 billion in revenue by 2028, while further strengthening our operating model and improving efficiency across the region by scaling best-in-class practices. With AI , we aim to operate more efficiently, using real-time data to drive faster decisions, especially in our prepaid market, where speed of execution and customer relevance are critical, are very critical.
Let us see how it does reflect into our financials. First, we anticipate an average high single-digit top-line growth over the next three years, with Africa and Middle East remaining the group's top contributor to overall growth. We're committed to that. This will be reflected positively on EBITDA, which will be outpacing the revenue growth. Given the region rapid payback time, we'll continue disciplined investments in our networks, particularly in terms of coverage and capacity, while maintaining the level of investment at a stable CapEx to sales ratio over the next three years. The combination of strong EBITDA growth and stable CapEx to sales ratio will enable us to deliver a high single-digit growth in operating cash flow over the period. In 2026, our outlook remains fully aligned with our ambition to deliver high single-digit EBITDA year-over-year growth.
Finally, we trust the future and remain fully committed to supporting the region's digital and societal development. Thank you, and I'll now give the floor back to Christel.
Thank you, Yasser, and thank you, Jérôme, as well. Let's now shift to Europe. Over the past years, we drove in-market consolidation in Belgium and Romania to strengthen our convergent strategy. Financially, we delivered a 2-point improvement in operating cash flow margin over the last three years, paving the way to sustainable value. Looking ahead, we will continue to operate in mature markets, where B2C market growth is expected to be between 0% and 4% across countries. By strategically balancing volume and value, and by leveraging our portfolio of strong brands, we aim to achieve low single-digit revenue growth. Our convergent and FTTH customer base is expected to grow at double-digit rates between 2025 and 2028. Customer loyalty will be a key driver of our success. We will develop personalized offers powered by AI-driven Customer Value Management , while enhancing the overall customer experience.
We will enrich our My Orange mobile app and leverage AI across all touch points to make interactions more relevant and engaging. In addition, we will boost adjacent services, like in France and Spain, such as cybersecurity or a new marketplace in Poland. On the B2B side, we anticipate continued growth, driven by cybersecurity, cloud, and data services, with a CAGR exceeding 5% between 2025 and 2028. Our commitments to excellence at scale will lead to a two points by EBITDA margin improvement between 2025 and 2028. This will be achieved by bold efficiency initiatives, platforming, and pooling of programs across our European countries. On the network side, we will expand RAN sharing and optimize our FTTH coverage through partnership, wholesale agreement, or FiberCo.
Moving from strategy to financial trajectory, we aim to deliver high-single-digit operating cash flow growth over the next three years, similar to levels expected in Africa, Middle East. Our European operations are expected to grow retail services low-single-digit and deliver low- to mid-single-digit EBITDA growth. Meanwhile, eCapEx to sales is projected to decline to 14%, thanks to strict CapEx discipline and optimized infrastructure. For 2026, our EBITDA outlook is consistent with our three-year trajectory, with low- to mid-single EBITDA growth. Of course, I'm presenting, but I know Marie-Noëlle is very committed with our six country CEOs to deliver on those objectives. Let's now take a closer look at our cybersecurity activities, one of our strategic focus areas fueling Innovative Growth . With more than 3,000 experts and a revenue of EUR 1.3 billion last year.
Orange Cyberdefense reached its Lead the Future target and is the leading cybersecurity company among European telco companies. Market projections indicate a continued increase in cyber threats, driven by technological advancements in AI and amplified by geopolitical tensions. These trends will translate into high single-digit growth in the European cyber defense market in the next three years. Our ambition is to fully capture that expansion, reaching EUR 2 billion in revenues by 2030. To achieve this goal, we will refine our cyber portfolio offers on growing solutions, such as Micro-SOC , and we will launch SME offers across our telco footprint. We will also capitalize on the synergies with telco expertise within the group to build comprehensive solutions across the value chain. The combination of our cyber and telco expertise is key to continue developing our cyber threat intelligence and complements Orange Business and our B2C activities.
Finally, we will continue to actively deploy AI solutions and to improve our operational performance necessary to support profitable business growth. I will now hand the floor over to Aliette, who will present our Orange Business strategy. Keep in mind that Orange Cyberdefense is included in Orange Business segment figures.
Thank you, Christel. Three years ago, Orange Business embarked on a deeply transformative journey. We halved our product portfolio, we redesigned our operating model around streamlined central functions and accountable geographies for their P&L, and we triggered a very ambitious efficiency program. The results are tangible. Our EBITDA decline dropped from -21% in 2022 to -6% in 2025, and our NPS improved by 12 points. With those new foundations in place, our objective is to continue our path toward EBITDA stabilization and resume profitable growth. This will require continuous efforts to optimize our cost base and our workforce, and it will also require to optimize our legacy business: voice, private networks, copper-based offers, because they will continue to decrease in the next years, in line with what we faced for the last five years.
However, we have strengths and major opportunities to be seized to offset such a decline of our legacy segment. Our mix in terms of trusted brand, go-to-market infrastructures, and expertise is truly distinctive. It puts us into a unique position to become the leader of trusted digital services. To do so, we want first to reinforce our positioning as a global leader on secure connectivity. It includes more sophisticated Customer Value Management on our fixed and mobile core business, and strong ambitions on 5G private mobile networks. It also relies upon the takeoff of our secure connectivity platform, which is called Evolution Platform, that generated over EUR 240 million in orders last year, with nearly 60% customer growth in H2. Beyond our core business, we are igniting new growth engines, leveraging platforms shared with the Orange Group.
We are specifically targeting key areas such as private cloud and trusted agentic AI. We are also making investments in sensitive verticals, such as healthcare and defense. On the latter, we combine our sovereign telco infrastructures with advanced technologies like cybersecurity, IoT, AI, edge computing, and quantum technologies to offer a very differentiated value proposition. You will see several innovation announcements in all those areas at the Orange Business Summit on March 17th, so stay tuned. In parallel, we continue to focus on operational efficiency and invest into our own digital transformation to drastically increase automation and leverage AI at scale. I'm also glad to announce today that we are moving to a new, very ambitious chapter. We have entered into an exclusive negotiation with a global system integrator for a strategic, non-capitalistic partnership to bring our transformation to the next levels in terms of scale.
Our aim is to enlarge our go-to-market reach, convey more volumes onto our platforms, and bring more competitiveness to our international operations. You should expect to hear more from us on this topic in the coming weeks. To summarize, our ambition is to leverage our very differentiated positioning and assets, including Orange Cyberdefense, to align with current market trends towards trusted solutions, ignite new growth engines, and stabilize our overall revenue. Our ongoing efforts to help to structurally reshape our mix of business, further driving the improvement of the EBITDA trend towards stabilization.
With that, let me now return the floor to Christel.
Thank you, Aliette, for this strong energy and commitment to transform Orange Business despite a difficult market environment. As you can see, we remain fully committed to transform, innovate, and further drive the improvement of the EBITDA trend. Before leaving the floor to Meini to present the MasOrange strategy, we are very proud of our binding agreement to acquire the remaining 50% of MasOrange from Lorca for EUR 4.25 billion. This transaction, which is expected to close in H1, is a major strategic move for the group. It expands our leadership in Europe and will represent a step change in cash generation for the group, with our operating cash flow expanding double-digit and EPS mid-single-digit accretion.
After this acquisition, the group revenues will amount to EUR 48 billion, with a balanced portfolio between our different geographies. In parallel, we have largely secured the refinancing of the MasOrange debt, and the credit agencies have confirmed our group ratings. We really look forward to building a bright future together that will bring new opportunities for Orange and all our customers in Spain. I will now hand over to Meini to present the strategic view for MasOrange for the coming years.
Thank you so much, Christel. It's a great pleasure being here with you today, and I'm also happy because we have quite satisfactory results to present. I want to start talking about our team. We have a great team, a team that was competing strongly just two years ago and now is acting within a sole organization and as a single team, and the results are tangible. We have been forming the biggest operator by number of clients in Spain, and we continue to grow, which is not obvious if we have 40% market share. The results are beyond what we could expect just two years ago. From a business perspective, it's super clear that our bet on customer loyalty pays off. We will continue to work on improving customer experience and on the attachment of additional services and devices.
We will also aim to grow in B2B. In B2B, our market share is still relatively low, around 20%, and we see strong potential to grow via broadening our service portfolio on one hand and increasing our channel presence on the other hand. On new business, super important, we are quite well on the track in diversification of our services. How do we do it? We do it by partnering with Tier 1 companies in the Spanish market. On the cost side, we are very confident to meet our targets on synergies. The target for 2027 are around EUR 500 million run rate, and we have already materialized around EUR 350 million of that.
That enabled us to get to a double-digit growth in operating cash flow since inception, so since year 1. On the other hand, on financial costs, we had quite significant financial costs until now because we had a relevant leverage at the beginning of the joint venture. But with the full ownership of MasOrange by Orange, which we expect during H1 this year, we will materially benefit of the scale of Orange, and we will be able to reduce significantly our financial costs. Let's now review our financial outlook. We expect the Spanish market to continue to be quite competitive, but, and that's the good news, we are committed to grow. We believe we will achieve a low- to mid-single-digit growth in revenues, and how do we achieve it?
Through a balanced value-volume strategy in the mass market, we will grow on B2B and new business, and we will continue to reduce churn in the market through increase of customer loyalty. If you look at EBITDA, we foresee around a low-single-digit growth of EBITDA throughout the period, but that considers around EUR 200 million non-cash IFRS-related impact regarding PPA, so a purchase price allocation accounting. If we eliminate that, meaning if you look at the real underlying business performance, we see a mid-single-digit growth also in EBITDA. If you combine this growth of EBITDA with a reduction of CapEx, we foresee a CapEx-to-sales ratio of around 12% by 2028. We will achieve a mid-to-high-single-digit CAGR growth of the operating cash flow between 2025 and 2028.
Overall, and that is super important, we target a very material cash step up over the next three years as a result of the improved operating cash flow and the interest cost reduction. If we look at 2026, we foresee a materialization of synergies, of accumulated synergies of EUR 430 million, and we see a growth in EBITDA in line with our three-year guidance. Thank you so much. Now, please provide a warm welcome to Laurent, who will talk about the important numbers, the financial trajectories, and the capital allocation. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you, Meini. Congratulations to you and the teams and good morning, everyone. This is definitely an exciting time for the group, and as you have seen, Orange has grown from strength to strength over the last three years. From a financial standpoint, we delivered a step-up of worth EUR 1.2 billion of free cash flow all-in. Going forward, our financial ambition is very clear: accelerate our free cash flow all-in generation, fueled by growth and efficiency. Let me start by taking a step back on what you heard and the business dynamics from our ExCom colleagues. In France, led by Jérôme, and in Europe, led by Marie-Noëlle, we are operating in mature and challenging market environment. In this context, we are accelerating innovative, fast-growing business streams on both B2B and B2C, such as cyber and retail adjacencies.
We are managing our legacy transition with very clear plans, fully under control, and we step up our efficiency projects to ramp up our profitability. With a leadership position in Spain, MasOrange, driven by Meinrad, will continue to build momentum on new businesses, B2B, and unlock synergies in a competitive market. In Africa and Middle East, Yasser, building on a balanced portfolio, we are leveraging the significant region potential. I like very much the internal motto of the plan of Yasser, which I share with you today: "Grow, grow, grow." Simple and to the point. In Orange Business, led by Aliette, and in cyber, led by Hugues, we are accelerating on transformation and will seize new opportunities on trusted connectivity and cyber. Overall, in common to all our business, our daily focus is execution, in particular on OpEx and CapEx efficiency project implementation.
The expected outcome of all of this is super simple: accelerate free cash flow all-in generation. This turns together into a strong financial playbook driven by our strategic ambition, Customer Intimacy , Innovative Growth, and Excellence at Scale, with four dimension. Number one, top-line growth accelerated by innovation. Second, EBITDA minus CapEx step up, driven by efficiency and scale. Third, clear priority on free cash flow all-in and EPS step up, our main value creation metrics. Fourth, obviously, sustainable and attractive shareholder return while protecting our strong balance sheet. Overall, by 2028, we will be unlocking significant cash headroom, putting us in a strong position. Let's zoom on the operational efficiency, which is obviously a critical component of our financial playbook. Three main levels.
One, AI at scale, as presented by Christel, to optimize our operation, improve customer experience, and increase agility across the group, targeting EUR 600 million of value by 2028. Second, step up our procurement transformation program with EUR 1 billion gross savings by 2028. Third, operational efficiency, building on our scale to address cost savings and benefit from mutualization. This involve platforming, real estate optimization, and shared services. On the operational side, we drive our network and IT transformation roadmap, including decommissioning of our legacy network.
All these levels lead to one goal: an increase of 2 points of EBITDA minus CapEx margin between 2025 and 2028, driven both by lower capital intensity of our business in a post-fiber rollout world, as well as OpEx efficiencies, evidenced by EUR 600 million OpEx saving in France, presented by Jérôme, and EUR 300 million in Orange Business, as presented by Aliette. Let me wrap up on the key target of our division and our global equation, which is straightforward. Revenue growth plus efficiency is leading to double-digit cash generation uplift. Overall, we aim to increase our organic cash flow at a double-digit CAGR over the next three years, reaching around EUR 5.2 billion from EUR 3.65 billion today. The full consolidation of MasOrange will bring a significant step up in our cash generation with double-digit accretion.
Free cash flow all-in growth in the next 3 years will be also double digits and above organic cash flow growth. This assuming around EUR 500 million of license per year in average over the next 3 years, and subordinated notes coupon remaining at less than EUR 200 million per year. Overall, if I assume EUR 700 million of flow below our organic cash flow, it would translate into a very simple numbers: a free cash flow all-in of around EUR 4.5 billion, a major step up from EUR 2.8 billion in 2025. Beside free cash flow generation, we are now focusing as well on earnings per share as a value creation metric. Why? Because we leave no stone unturned in Orange.
We drive the company performance down to the net income in the same way as we drive the cash down to the free cash flow all-in. With this in mind, we introduce a new performance indicators, adjusted earnings per share, to manage our underlying performance. Between 2025 and 2028, we are expecting the adjusted EPS to grow at a CAGR of around 10%, driven by EBITDA growth and acquisition from the full consolidation of MasOrange. This will in turn step up our ROCE, which remains as well an important decision value creation metric. This positive impact will be partly offset, of course, by higher interest expense, will impacted by MasOrange net debt integration, income tax up in line with business performance, and a progressive increase in minority interest related to Africa and Middle East momentum.
Let me move to a key point of our presentation today: Capital Allocation Policy. I'm sure that you are eager to hear about that. Our North Star is very clear: sustainable value creation, and this is a driver of our Capital Allocation Policy, structured around four dimension. First, clear focus on the balance sheet. Our leverage ratio should increase to around 2.4x by year-end 2026, linked to the acquisition of MasOrange. We will focus on a progressive deleveraging to return to a net debt-to-EBITDA ratio of around 2x by 2028, excluding, of course, any potential impact of consolidation in France. This will secure our strong credit rating, a key asset for the Group, and gives us flexibility to finance by debt our M&A priorities. Second, our M&A strategy is straightforward: focus on the French consolidation opportunity.
Additionally, of course, we may look at bolt-on acquisition, in particular on cyber, on Africa and Middle East, being very strict, trust me, on conditions to clear value creation. Third, discipline CapEx management. We'll maintain a discipline CapEx policy to reach around 14% eCapEx to sales by 2028. Finally, a clear priority on attractive shareholder remuneration. All of this initiative will be pursued while preserving an attractive dividend policy with progressive dividend growth. Altogether, by 2028, we will have significant cash headroom, putting us in a very strong position. Let me zoom on the shareholder return remuneration. We are proud to say that the Orange stock delivered 82% of total shareholder return over the past three years, End 2022-End 2025 , outperforming its sectors and the CAC 40. This illustrates our Lead the Future's solid execution and credibility.
In term of dividends, as you know, we gradually increased sustainably our dividend from EUR 0.70 in 2022 to EUR 0.75 for 2025, and we aim to sustain this momentum to a rock-solid progressive dividend growth. From 2026, our dividend will increase by 5% to EUR 0.79, and we are introducing a new dividend floor at EUR 0.85 for 2028. Let me wrap up before handing over to Christel to present our guidance with our financial priorities, which are super clear. One, focus every day on execution, as we have done during Lead the Future. Two, step up our free cash flow all-in generation. Third, execute our clear allocation priorities, leading to significant headroom by 2028. Christel, back to you.
Thank you, Laurent. As mentioned yesterday at our full year result presentation, we have successfully achieved all our 2025 financial targets, including two guidance upgrades in 2025, with a 3.8% EBITDA growth that accelerated throughout the year, and eCapEx discipline in line with our guidance. Both led to the significant growth of our organic cash flow. We confirmed the dividend at EUR 0.75 for 2025. Looking ahead to 2026, at current perimeter, excluding MasOrange reconsolidation, we anticipate a circa 3% EBITDA growth and an organic cash flow of circa EUR 4 billion. Our eCapEx to sales ratio will remain at around 15%. The planned reconsolidation of MasOrange in H1 2026 should enable us to confirm these guidances and will be accretive on our organic cash flow.
Our leverage will increase temporarily, and our midterm target of circa 2x net debt to EBITDA remains unchanged. Regarding the dividend, we plan to increase it to 79 cents per share for 2026. For our midterm outlook, we include MasOrange, as we are very confident on the closing in H1 2026. We anticipate a circa 3% EBITDA CAGR growth between 2025 and 2028 in CAGR on a comparable basis, post-consolidation of MasOrange. We will maintain a disciplined capex policy with a decrease of eCapEx-to-sales ratio to circa 14% by 2028. This will enable us to generate a strong organic cash flow of around EUR 5.2 billion in 2028. As Laurent already mentioned, we remain committed to a progressive dividend growth with a new dividend floor of EUR 0.85 in 2028.
Finally, we will protect our solid balance sheet with a midterm net debt-to-EBITDA target of 2x, to be achieved by 2028, excluding a potential transaction in France. To summarize our Trust the Future plan, based on our solid Lead the Future foundation, and with trust at the core, we will focus on Customer Intimacy , Innovative Growth, and Excellence at Scale. This is a robust plan, and together with all the leadership team, we are determined to deliver on strong cash step-up. We will also continue fostering greater team engagement and skills development to sustain our momentum. The success of our Africa, Middle East growth strategy is expected to continue. Our accelerated transformation efforts, combined with CapEx reduction in our mature markets, will foster cash flow and EPS growth.
The full reconsolidation of MasOrange will drive a positive shift in our group profile and strengthen our cash generation capabilities. Looking ahead, we remain committed to maintaining attractive shareholder returns while consolidating our solid position within investment-grade ratings. Finally, the potential consolidation in France could further accelerate efficiency and value creation. What are the ingredients of the success of this plan? We are focusing on what we control. We will maintain a relentless focus on execution, as we've done in the last three years. You have the commitment of the leadership team, and as well as the entire Orange group, and the management team and I are now ready to answer your questions just after a short video.
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Orange Business.
What makes Orange Money truly unique? Is it our presence across every corner of the country? Maybe it's because we're here for everyone, no matter who you are. Could it be that we're always here at any moment, for any reason? Either way, every time you need to pay, receive, transfer, save, or borrow, Orange Money is here.
I think Laurent is gonna be back in a second. He's here. Okay, we are now ready to begin the Q&A session. To ensure we can give as many people as possible the opportunity to participate, we kindly ask that you limit yourselves to one or two questions. If we are unable to take your question today, please feel free to contact the Investor Relations team. We will start with questions from the room before moving on to questions from our online audience.
Our first question will be from Josh, number two.
Thank you very much. It's Josh Mills from BNP Paribas. First question, just a bit of a clarification on the free cash flow guidance. Could you give us a bit more of a building block to understand how much contribution MasOrange is going to be providing to that EUR 5.2 billion figure? Then maybe a bit of a steer on the phasing of that free cash flow ramp-up during the period as well would be helpful. Secondly, I wanted to come back to one of the potential risks to the guidance which has been presented today. In the introduction, you talked about a EUR 500 million contribution, both in consumer and B2B, from digital services, cloud computing, et cetera.
Given the concerns we're seeing more broadly about AI disruption, disrupting traditional IT services companies, what do you think gives Orange the right to play in that space? What unique advantages do you have? To be quite specific, within the free cash flow uplift guidance which you provided, how much of that free cash flow uplift is assumed to come from those digital services? Thanks.
Thank you, Laurent. You take the cash flow, and then, I will take the AI .
Thanks, Josh, for your question. On the free cash flow of EUR 5.2 billion, as we said, Orange is contributing a double-digit acquisition. If I just be a bit more specific, we have seen the latest analysts, which are reporting EUR 700 million-EUR 800 million of organic cash flow by 2028 in Orange. This is a kind of fair and ballpark numbers that you should assume into this. Globally, EUR 1.6 billion of cash uplift, EUR 700-EUR 800 in Orange, and the rest on the current group perimeters altogether.
Coming back to our growth plan for B2B and the potential disruption of AI in that. First of all, as you know, and that's true already for the past three years, we moved our strategy where indeed we talk about IT and IS, but the core of the value we bring is platform. We rely on the scale, the networks, the infrastructure, and also the know-how, cybersecurity. This will not be disrupted with AI. On the contrary, actually, AI accelerates cyber threats, and that's why the name of the plan, Trust the Future, because that's. Most of the discussion we have with customers, of course, connectivity will not be disrupted by AI. We can discuss about what's gonna be the impact of AI on the traffic on our networks, but with fiber networks, we know we have what's needed.
But in terms of services for B2B, I mean connectivity will remain, cloud will remain, because companies are all looking for trusted solutions to store their data, to deploy AI, and to be able, especially in the current environment, to scale. And that's something that I don't know, maybe you want to comment, because we see day-to-day. So our business model is really not IT integration. We're not an IT integrator company. We rely on our strength, which is really infrastructurer, platforms, and of course, know-how, especiallyg cybersecurity.
Indeed, I mean, not much to add, but we are not a standard digital services company. What we are, we are leveraging platforms, as Christel just said, and those platforms are rooted into the Orange sovereign infrastructures, which is very differentiating. They are also shared with the Orange Group, both for our internal needs and our B2B clients. This gives us lots of credibility toward our clients, and we see very, very high demand at the moment on whether it's on private cloud or on trusted AI at large.
So we will take our next question from Akhil number two.
Hi, good morning. I've got two questions as well, please, if I can. The first one is on culture and innovation. Christel, you talked a lot at the beginning of your presentation around what you've done as an organization to try and create change. I think if I heard correctly, you said across your top 300 people, you've made changes across 60% of that. What I'd really love to understand is, what are the routes you're using to drive that change? Is it internal mobility? Is it external hiring? If you're doing these things, how are you doing it? What does it really mean in terms of the way the organization is structured? Because if you're trying to drive innovation, are you creating verticals across the businesses to create and drive that innovation, or are you doing it locally?
Just a bit of color to understand what you're really doing to change the business going forward. The second question for Laurent is on capital allocation. Firstly, Laurent, you mentioned to the prior question, EUR 700 million-EUR 800 million for MasOrange is a sensible ballpark. I just wanted to clarify, does it include the debt refinancing or not? Just to understand, is that standalone or is that inclusive of addressing the debt? The bigger picture is, when we look at your all-in cash guidance for 2028, there's obviously a very impressive ramp, and I appreciate you have M&A on the horizon, but how are you at least conceptually thinking midterm around dividend payout ratio? Because implicitly, it looks like by 2028, you'd be sitting roughly at about a 50-something % dividend payout ratio.
Thanks, Akhil. On the culture and innovation, and don't take me wrong, we're not arrived yet. It's a journey, and you don't change a company culture in a few years. This is a 10-year journey. What we are doing is really, first of all, talking about what's not working because I think a company that wants to innovate has to fail. We come from a world where innovation in the telecom industry has actually come from 2G, 3G, 4G. The innovation was more in standardization and then rolling out big mobile networks.
What we are doing is, of course, and when we said we have this Innovative Growth initiative, we spend time looking at what are those pockets of growth that we have in the company, and we have them already, and we talk to the teams in charge. What's preventing them from growing faster? Sometime it's having the right skills because if we think about ad tech or cybersecurity or home security, it's not at all a telecom background. Very often we think about being the incumbent that has the biggest market share. You have to have the mindset of a challenger. By the way, I'm very excited to have a challenger in the team now with Meini.
I tell you some of the debates between Jérôme and Meini are very exciting because you have, even though Jérôme comes from Middle East and Africa the mindset of being an incumbent in a country like France, I mean, this is great. It's a fantastic asset. We have a mindset of being a fortress because of regulation and, of course, everything we do, we are scrutinized, and, of course, our competitors are agile in trying to compete. In Spain, we are now a leader in Spain in terms of volume, but we have this challenger mindset, and we compare how we make decision. Very often, it's really, it comes back to having the right people, having the right incentives, having the right allocation of budget, and also calling it short when it fails.
I mean, we've learned also because we know we closed Orange Bank. We lost a lot with the banking activity. The message I send internally, the idea of Orange Bank was a good one. It's the execution that was, I mean, what it was. The objective is really to assume that we have the right to fail. We should then adjust. We need short-term objectives, and we need top management priority on those initiatives. Because if you run a EUR 17 billion business, like Jérôme does, I mean, why would you spare time, not just Jérôme, but his leadership team, on an initiative that's today EUR 50 million, that has the potential to grow to EUR 150 million?
It's really time allocation at top, and then the right people, the right incentive, the right governance around allocated capital as well. That's what we are driving. Of course, with our Orange Innovation, we have this unique ability at group level to work with the best tech partners, and you need the size, and even being Orange, we're small compared to some of those tech giants. That's really what we bring. Again, it's a journey. Lesson and message number one is we have to assume we will fail, and we have to learn fast. We'd rather fail fast, not lose money, than fail too long down the road. On the capital allocation?
Yep. On your question on the cash, EUR 700-EUR 800 is including, of course, the interest related to the MasOrange debt. Of course, this MasOrange debt will be refinanced with better condition using, of course, the strength of the group. This is what we have done with Matthieu by these two jumbo bonds that we have submitted and emitted end of 2025, early 2026. I mean, on the capital allocation, this is a more post-2028 question, so that's far down the road. Conceptually, what is clear is that with EUR 4.5 billion of assumed free cash flow all-in by 2028, we have a significant headroom, as I say, and you can do the math. Very simple.
Our priority is clearly the consolidation in France, which will be a significant step in terms of business and value creation. Of course, there is plenty of way in which of shape or form this consolidation could take place, and we want to keep this headroom to feed this M&A priority moving forward.
We'll now take a question on the row number three. Nick?
Hi there. M orning. Nick Lyall from Berenberg. Could I ask on the Orange France guidance, please? The retail revenue ex-PSTN seems pretty flat for the next three years. Given the good subs numbers, that doesn't suggest that you think things are turning around fast in terms of ARPU. Could you please give us a little bit of an update on your expectations you've baked into guidance there? Secondly, back on your point, Laurent, just on the value creation from the M&A, could you give us a clue on what sort of synergies you might expect? Is this all market repair in revenue, or is there potential OpEx synergies in there as well? Could you help us out, please, on what your current due diligence is showing you? Thank you.
Jerome?
Yes, you're right mentioning that the French market on the retail side remains very competitive. We expect our retail excluding PSTN to be stable over the period of a plan. That's basically based on the fact that we think we can go even further in terms of churn management and decreasing our churn on both mobile and broadband. As you know, our acquisition machine, our sales machine is going full-fledged, as you saw in our results of Q4 in 2025. We want to keep that momentum, shield our market share, and shield it, in particular with churn management mechanism.
That's why the Customer Intimacy pillar of the plan is very important for us. We want to push for value, as I mentioned, by upselling, cross-selling in two ways for that. We have a very strong momentum on convergence services. We still have room to go for increasing on our convergent base with an ARPU increasing as well. As we just mentioned, we have lots of opportunities in adjacencies as well, which are sometimes little reverse today, from home protection to cybersecurity for residential and professional, to insurance, to Orange Advertising platform, which can be scaled and which will contribute as well to the growth of a retail business in France.
O verall, we could object. I mean, internally, of course, I'm not targeting the teams on saying, "Look, we should be flat." The reality is that we know the market is extremely competitive. We don't know what's gonna happen on market consolidation, so we'd rather plan for something that is not changing from what we see today and then work on our efficiency and what it means to operate in a market that could be indeed difficult in the years to come. That doesn't mean we're not investing on those growth initiatives and on doing everything we said in the plan. On the value creation from consolidation, I mean, no difference between what we see for France from what we've seen in Spain.
It creates massive synergies. The value comes from synergies. Bringing mobile customers on our network creates synergies. Bringing broadband customers on our fiber creates synergies. Of course, we can look at all the synergies we've been driving in Spain. The same recipe would apply in a scenario in France. I think that's very important because I think that's one of the key regulatory item. Our competition authorities, for, I don't know, good or bad reason, are not integrating those synergies and the efficiency in the way they look at market consolidation. Efficiency is what's gonna help us continue to invest, and also efficiency is somehow the guarantee that we can continue to offer cheap prices in markets where there's less volume growth because our markets are mature.
Three competing players in a market with low growth is probably as, if not more, competitive than four players in a growth market. We'll now move to a question from the online audience.
We have a question from David Wright. David, please go ahead.
I hope you guys can hear me okay, and I apologize for not being there. A question for Meini. Your advertising platform at MasOrange looks to be one of the most innovative in the European telecom sector. One question is just how much contribution is that making to the 2028 guidance? I doubt it's so much, but what I would like to ask you is to just give us a little blue sky imagination on that platform. It looks like it has amazing potential, and of course, not just in Spain, but across the group. Where could you really go with that? Thank you.
Meini loves blue sky.
Thank you, David.
Over to you, Meini.
Well, I think data is the oil of the future, and we as operators have a lot of data about customers. I'm not talking so much about personal data, but consumer behavior, location-based data. We know we have network data increasingly available because network data is getting exposed. We're talking a lot, a lot about Open Gateway. Open Gateway is a fantastic opportunity to verify the identity of the users. Now, in a world where we don't know who is fake and who is real, that's a super asset that we have as operators. To be concrete on the advertising platform, what does it mean? We are not a marketing agency. What we do is to connect advertisers, and we have Tier 1 advertisers, IKEA, Coca-Cola in Spain, et cetera, with segmented and qualified audiences.
What does it mean? That if somebody wants to direct a campaign to a very micro, small micro segment of clients, we are able to offer the advertiser this segment. What is the effect? That we increase the effectiveness of the marketing campaigns by a factor of two or three. It's fantastic news. It would be relevant, the contribution. I mean, I'm not allowed to give a exact guidance right now on that, but what we see is that the new business area, that is quite small in terms of volume, is quite relevant in terms of margin, and the margin contribution will be increasing significantly over the next few years.
We'll take our next question from Stéphane, row number two.
Thank you. Stéphane from Oddo. Two questions if I can. The first one is you mentioned network sharing in savings. I was just curious if that includes RAN sharing and if you have any appetite for RAN sharing and in which geographies. My second question is regarding the copper dismantling that you mentioned on slide 28. There is no impact in EBITDA because you've basically provisioned it. What sort of cash impact do you think that could be in 2028? Overall, I'm just trying to understand the economics of that plan because we just picked 2028.
What sort of benefits cumulated over the dismantling of the copper you are expecting versus that provision of EUR 1.7 billion that you've done? Thank you.
T hank you, Stéphane. Absolutely network sharing means RAN sharing. We already have many RAN sharing agreements. We have one in Spain. We have one in Belgium with Proximus. We have one with Vodafone in Romania. We have one with Deutsche Telekom in Poland. Every RAN sharing agreement is sometime a bit different. Sometime it's only rural areas, sometime we split the location. There's different mechanism, but we know this will continue because more and more, the virtualization and the softwarization of radio technology allows to share the infrastructure, the physical infrastructure, but still to differentiate the way we want to organize the networks for two players. I'm sure this is something we'll continue. We will definitely continue.
That's true also for, I mean, when we talk about fiber, when we say we want to optimize, I mean, you see what we've done in Spain with premium fiber. Spain is typically a market where there was a lot of overbuilt. Sometime it's because the regulation environment or there's no incentive to reuse existing fiber because wholesale agreements are not attractive. It's cheaper to roll out fiber, and that's what happened in many areas in Spain. Now, of course, that doesn't apply to rural areas. Every country is different, but it's really country by country that we're optimizing. The mindset is really given, and this is not just for Orange. All telecom operators want to optimize their investments, and so driving efficiency by sharing is absolutely the way to go.
On the copper dismantling, first and before, I mean, Laurent provides more numbers. I mean, just think about the massive industrial projects that is. We have to go into every single little city in France and to decommission, which really means at some point to cut the copper, not the fiber, the copper cable. One big challenge in that project is to make sure the copper is not stolen before we can extract it and sell it. There's a lot of assurance and industrial project has been also focused on making sure the value does not get extracted for someone else, and that's key also. We've made some assumptions, and of course, unfortunately, we know how much we lost this year.
I mean, we don't know, because you never know what you don't know. We're working a lot with the security, I mean, authorities as well, because it's something that, when a copper cable is cut, even if there's only one customer left on that copper, that creates, I mean, customer insatisfaction, and that's bad. On top of the fact that, of course, it may be lost value. On the numbers?
Yes, so Stéphane good morning. So on the economics of this, so the cost of the dismantling is around EUR 1.7 billion. This is what we have provisioned in the account end of 2025. And as you say, hence no EBITDA impact moving forward. But in terms of economics, the cost is EUR 1.7 billion. The expected copper sale will be slightly higher than EUR 1.7 billion, so we see overall an economic cash slightly positive between the copper sale minus the dismantling cost. If I look at the cash impact of it on a yearly basis, just to give you a sense, we are expecting a similar trend in terms of this positive, small positive cash in '25, '26, '27, '28. So no major evolution in terms of trends versus what we have seen in 2025.
We'll take our next question from Matthieu, row number four.
Good morning. Thank you for the presentation. I had two questions, please. First, on France, you give a very detailed guidance about the retail and wholesale trends. The question I had was, you talk about the wholesale linked to copper that will decline, as you explained. There are other elements in wholesale which are always very difficult, certainly for us, to model, and specifically co-financing and maybe on backhaul, we see other players deploy their own backhaul. Is your guidance assuming that all these wholesale revenues remain stable during the guidance period, or do you have offsetting factors that would play against the potential declines? Then I had a question around AI, and Christel, you kind of touched briefly on it, but obviously, you lay out some revenue opportunities and efficiency opportunities.
A question I have, and I understand it's early days, but is there any signs that AI could drive traffic in a substantial way on the B2C market? If that's the case, are your network configured for that type of traffic, which could have different characteristics than the usual one? Therefore, could it mean more CapEx? Really, the opportunity there. Thank you.
O n the wholesale trajectory in France, I mean, we answered some of the question we know you had on what's going to be the impact of the copper decommissioning. That's why we were very transparent on what's going to be the impact. Now, a lot of the business we do in France, and as we said, infrastructure remains a very important business for us. There will be growth with fiber wholesale in France, because as we continue to fill our networks, this will generate growth. We have MVNO types of agreement. Of course, we have the civil works. I mean, our poles are used, and this is something that is stabilized, but of course, then it's more the regulation that could impact.
There's definitely continue to be growth on this part of the business. The co-financing is something that, first of all, does not rely on us, so it's difficult to plan. We've seen, I mean, you look at the past five years, there could be some investment. We know, I mean, how much our competitors have already co-financed or not, so we know somehow what could happen. Think just about what could happen to SFR. That may have an impact, I would say, in the next year. It's very difficult for us to plan, and that could indeed have some impact. Overall, we plan for something that is consistent, and then, of course, we would have to adapt if things come earlier than planned or later.
No big impact to be expected overall. Of course, no impact on our guidance.
Right. On the other wholesale, if I put aside co-financing, as you say, Christel, because there is always a phasing not in our hands, but the rest, there is plus and minus. Plus on the FTTH fiber, as you say, minus on the PIN construction, for instance. You can expect something roughly stable, slightly negative, but no massive evolution compared to the 2025 situation.
On the impact of AI on our traffic and our networks, I mean, first of all, it's very difficult, and whoever has a crystal ball may answer that question, but we see very different trends. My deep conviction is that ultimately, what's gonna drive where AI is used is power. Availability of power. Because, I mean, the large data centers today, the bottleneck is power. Of course, China has a lot of power available, so they go faster. If you see what's happening on devices, handsets, I mean, the big debates on how much compute do we put in a device to be able to have AI assistance that could drive, I mean, real-time translation, which we know is something that customers expect.
The challenge is going to be power consumption of the devices, because nobody wants to be able to have to recharge the device every two hours. So power will be the guiding force. Today, the way we use AI is still very much based on text. So text, limited impact. Of course, video AI, the new, I mean, agent AI, this very uncertain. It's still, again, how much we've been talking about edge computing and the fact that our networks could become equipped. If everyone wears glasses, real-time, no doubt this will have impact on our networks. This is something that our Orange Innovation team are very passionate to learn and to try to research. Now, the reality is that who's going to pay for it, et cetera.
We know we have the infrastructure that's required. The question about should we invest in compute capacity at the edge now, because eventually there will be traffic? Not yet. I mean, really not something we see the need. As we said, our CapEx, in any case, is value-driven. Again, given we own the infrastructure, we have the flexibility to test, to learn. Really today, the impact of traffic, very limited in terms of volume. Now, the mix of traffic, the traffic generated by AI, we think that two-third of the traffic by 2030 will be AI-generated type of traffic. We see that already. If you look at our networks, and this is something that we'll continue to invest in and innovate, our networks are filtering bad traffic, spams, cyberattacks every day.
This, unfortunately, is not something that anybody wants to pay for, whether you're a company or you're an individual. This is something that AI is generating. You see the debate on social networks. I mean, and today, the big challenge is to understand, I mean, the threat, and that's why trust the future. I mean, if you pick up the phone, are you really talking to the person you think is calling you? The more you dive into the art of the possible with AI, the more difficult. This is something where, as a telecom operator, we truly think we can bring a response.
We'll take the next question from Roshan, row number 2.
Morning, everyone. It's Roshan Ranjit from Deutsche Bank. Two questions, please. My first one is on the Africa, Middle East unit. It's possible to delve down a bit more to see which are particular markets you would call out in driving that high single-digit growth. To that point, I guess you consistently kind of have upgraded, over-delivered on the Africa, Middle East unit, and double-digit growth, I think 13% in 2025. Is there an element of conservatism in that high single digit at this stage? Secondly, just moving on back to France, we are seeing this mix shift within the kind of volumes that you are adding.
How are the levers, or how should we see the levers that you are pulling to maintain the stable revenue growth? Is that just the premiums that you charge for 5G, fiber? Could we see more targeted price increases, which I think you've done in the past? Anything you could say around that? Very helpful. Thank you.
Should I leave the floor to Yasser? We had interesting debates on the guidance because Yasser has been the CEO of Egypt, and Egypt was clearly an outperformer. Yasser is a very ambitious CEO. No, Yasser, you know the region. Which country will drive .
Maybe. Yes, so just without going into specific countries, but maybe on general, which is the most important part, in the 18 countries, 16 consolidated, we have 10 countries that are growing more than double digits. We have no single country representing more than 15% of our footprint. It means that we have a very well dynamics that will enable us to continue the growth. Maybe we will share it. We're a bit conservative offline, online. This is wherever we wanna talk, take it.
We see the CFO, CEO debate that we had.
See the debate. We're, at the end of the day, very, very confident that we're much with this portfolio and with 10 countries growing, maybe it will not be the same next year or this year, and will not be the same the year after. In the plan, in fact, it's not, so countries are changing. We have certain countries that go certain problems this year that are not the same afterwards. This portfolio, Orange Middle East Africa, we treat it as one country, it's not. It's very risk-averse, w e, in fact, due to this portfolio, we believe that we will sustain this growth, and it's not one or two countries that are delivering this growth, so it's not like other players in the region.
On the contrary, it's 10 countries that are driving this growth. It's more than 50% of the footprint that is driving that growth. Of course, Egypt was one of them, but many others are one of them, and many others are helping in this growth.
Laurent, you want to add on the guidance or?
No, I think that we have a very solid high single-digit guidance. That's what I will say as a wrap-up. We have a very resilient footprint, and we have a very strong leadership team. Very strong. France?
I can take it. N o, but just to, to drive value up, first is to focus very much on the quality of the base and keeping our base, as I was mentioning before, and to shield our market share and making sure we continue to improve in churn management, even if we have the lowest churn in the market. Second is to upsell and look for a value increase every time we can. When I talk about upsell, there are two ways to, to drive it.
First is upsell during the act of selling, and we've been improving a lot, and we continue to improve in our channel management to make sure that when the customer enters in our shop with a pricing idea in mind, our sales force is able to drive the value up and drive a mix of sell up. We've been progressing a lot on that, and we'll continue to do that in every channel. Second one is to manage upsell on the base. For that, as you were saying, we manage to increase the value of the packages, for instance, with the Livebox Max, including contents, which is now very popular.
We are able to upsell customers from a normal fiber offer up to a full triple play plus subscription VOD services, and that's a way to increase move customers to the highest packages. Of course, there is convergence as well, and as we said before, we have the opportunity to move more customers. We still have afishing pool to attract Orange broadband, non-mobile, and Orange mobile, non-broadband customers. This is why the CVM is so important for us, and we are as well investing a lot in our AI , in our Customer Value Management and customer base management tools.
Last but not least, the contribution of additional non-connectivity services, so the adjacent services as we presented before, which are a way as well to increase ARPU and increase value for those customers. No big assumption on the price increase, back book, let's say. There are always opportunity and tactical moves that we do every year on that. I mean, the protection of value relies more on the other levels I've been mentioning before.
Okay, we'll take our next question from Molly, row number one.
Hi, good morning, and thank you for taking my questions. I have two, please. Firstly, just on Enterprise, you're saying that you're going to have around EUR 300 million in savings, but that looks like it's ex-Cyberdefense. Will Cyberdefense OpEx be dilutive or on top of that? Kind of more broadly, could you give us a little bit more detail on building blocks to return to growth? My second question is just on CapEx. Is the EUR 300 million in savings 100% from the fiber envelope, or are there other material factors in that? Thank you.
On the Orange Business trajectory, I mean, within that segment, as we said, we have Orange Cyberdefense, and we manage it separately. Of course, Orange Cyberdefense has its profitability objective, and they are driving it, but we manage it so that they have the ability to invest for growth, given it's a growth segment, when on connectivity in Orange Business, we have the legacy, where we have to really optimize on the cost. On the savings and the different growth, the way we look at Orange Business is also international, France Global customers who have an international footprint, and then France local customers. That's also, for us, driving the way we allocate investment and we drive efficiency. Aliette, you want?
O verall, what will sustain the growth in the coming years is first, we will keep on protecting our core business, especially in France, with a lot of value-based management as well, on both fixed and mobile. As I mentioned earlier, we have really now a leading global position on secure connectivity with platforms that we've built in the past years, with an exponential growth on this segment at the moment, where we really aim at capturing market shares in the coming years. On top of this, we are making investments on private cloud, especially in Europe, and on trusted agentic AI, and we will make a few announcements in the coming weeks on this topic.
On the CapEx. D o you wanna?
O n the EUR 300 million CapEx, I start briefly and then Jérôme, please. No, I think that it's more than fiber. There is different dynamic as well with the customer CPE, but Jérôme, maybe you develop on it.
No, of course, a lot of it is coming from the fact that we've been almost achieving the fiber deployment in France. Of course, it will decrease over time in the years to come. But we have still some buckets that we need to invest in, particularly the customer CapEx for installation and the Livebox and set-top box, which is part of it. We are refreshing our mobile RAN as well. We have a new 5G core network. The move to cloud of our IT systems and networks is as well contributing to the remaining CapEx.
All in all, we said we commit to a EUR 300 million decrease minimum. We identify, we have already identified where that should come from in our different buckets of CapEx, without jeopardizing our number one position in quality of service and network quality in France, which is a great asset for us.
That's a two-point reduction on eCapEx to sales in an environment where total sales in France, because of the copper decommissioning, is decreasing.
Okay, so we'll take next question from Carl, row number one.
That's great. Thank you very much. Carl Murdock-Smith from Citi. I want to bring it back to Africa again, given how much of your group growth is represented by that. I've been confused by consensus for a while because consensus seems to have eCapEx to sales reducing in the next few years, and obviously, your guidance for the next three years is for stable at about 17%. Consensus had it going down to below 16% eCapEx to sales, and then 15% by the end of the decade. Given the growth that you're seeing in Africa, why would you let up? Why would you stop investing? Basically, can you just confirm, am I right that consensus is wrong?
Secondly, you also talk about Africa and the Middle East as well in terms of the acquisitions alongside the consolidation in France and bolt-ons inside the fence. Can you just talk about that a bit more as well? Are we talking about capability-led acquisitions, or could there be geographic acquisitions as well? Thank you.
You want to respond to the consensus? Laurent,
I think that it's very clear. The engine of growth of Africa is CapEx because the day you come with a new antenna in a new place where there is no connection, you get revenues, and in 24 months, 18 months, the money is back. That's exactly the equation that Yasser and the team are driving, and that's why we feel that we will stay at a stable, around 17% of eCapEx over sales over the next three years, and then later on, we'll see.
No reduction for the next three years, at least on the CapEx to sales.
Sales increases, so eCapEx to sales i t's more budget.
It's an absolute amount, is going up. Of course, we're, again, investing it very also smartly, and it has to also go down that we have also more and more efficiencies in CapEx. It's not only even the sales that will that is growing, which CapEx is growing on absolute terms, but there's also efficiency inside the CapEx. Usually, year-over-year, between 5%-10% efficiency that we drive on top of the same amount of CapEx that we invest. In fact, it's a double increase, if you want, on efficiency of the CapEx that we're doing.
On M&A and related to the MEA region, I mean, as we say, bolt-on and we are looking at both opportunity and geo-expansion. We talk about bolt-ons, so don't put the list of the big country names because that wouldn't be, that wouldn't qualify as bolt-on. Again, always, if there's value to be created, and we've proved in the past that we acquired operation, we turn them around and significantly. I have names in mind of countries, but I don't want to mention them here.
We know we have an engine where we can create value with geo expansion based on our model of shared services centers, skills, best skills shared across the countries, and then we have the talent in the region with country CEOs that move from one country to another, and they are really talents from the region. Geo expansion is definitely one. Now, we haven't done some. Actually, we've been looking at some. Sometimes they don't materialize, but again, that's something we want to flag. We may also want to look at bolt-on to feed our Max it or money trajectory. That would be, of course, different, probably not. I mean, that qualifies at bolt-on, definitely.
That's great. Thank you.
We'll take our next question from Andrew, row number three.
Hi. I just wanted to talk about CapEx but in the context of France instead and see if I can persuade you to talk about post-2028 capital intensity. O nce you've c ompleted the switch-off of copper in 2030. It seems that not only will you have the benefit of a lower maintenance cost fiber network, but also essentially on balance sheet, it'll only be two-thirds of the country, aside from CPE and routers. Obviously, you want to invest a lot in mobile to keep up your position in that market, but it feels like there should be another step down or in capital intensity that could be quite material. Just wondered if you could talk about that.
Well, of course, the copper ends in 2030, not 2028, but that's what we've said, that we see, I mean, continued efficiency on the CapEx. The big question mark in the industry is 6G. Let's be clear, we're not planning for it, and the reality today is that the CapEx in our mobile network is really to decommission 2G, 3G, to move to 4G, 5G, because that's really driving efficiency for us on the cost of every gigabit of traffic we have on our network. Because that's really the objective: to have competitiveness in the way we manage the traffic on our network. Of course, customer CapEx is something we would always favor.
Yes, you're right, that CapEx efficiency will continue beyond 2028.
We'll take our next question from Ondrej. Well, number one or four, to you.
Thank you. Hi, thank you. Ondrej here from UBS. Two questions from me as well, please. First, on France, I just want to understand the, I guess, dynamics beyond 2028 in terms of especially the potential EBITDA acceleration, right? Because you've got a lot of drag now related to copper, and the wholesale part at least seems like it could finally kind of turn to at least neutral, if not back to growth, sometime in 2029-2030. In terms of the efficiencies, I just wanted to understand how much of efficiencies related to copper specifically, which the companies that have already shut down their legacy networks have had pretty immaterial amounts of.
How much in the EUR 600 million of efficiencies by 2028 in France are you foreseeing from this copper shutdown? Is it fair to assume that beyond 2028, these efficiencies will actually step up, therefore, in combination with maybe a much better wholesale picture, we can see an acceleration in EBITDA in France, just conceptually beyond 2028? That's the first question. The second question related to Spain. Meinrad, I hope your bespoke sneakers, first of all, are a sign of strong commitment to the business.
Then on a more serious note, the kind of EBITDA number related to, first of all, the top line, which is up to the single-digit, the residual efficiencies or the synergies, which alone should yield close to low single-digit growth on EBITDA, plus the other stuff that I think, have flagged in the past, such as work on reducing churn, all put together, make it seem like the EBITDA growth is, is a bit less than what these things could point towards. My question would be, is there a lot of reinvestment, for example, into some of these new platforms that you're developing, assumed for the next couple of years?
Why would the operating leverage in this business not be as high as all of these various data points which suggest? Thank you.
On France, of course, it's too early to comment post 2028, but on , the copper decommissioning will continue after 28, and so in terms of headwind coming from loss of wholesale revenue, we still have, as we mentioned, that EUR 300 million of copper-related revenues that would still disappear after 2028. That's on the impact, of course, moving forward. Now, if we come to the efficiency that we are describing to be able to stabilize the EBITDA while we transition the copper, most of these efficiency is not copper related, even though copper, we think, represents 15%, EUR 100 million on the 600. Actually, when I, and this is something that Jean-François Fallacher had launched in France, but we have, I get from the notes, 350 initiatives to drive operational efficiency.
It's really, I mean, a lot of work, and this has come also from bottom up. I mean, Orange France is a huge organization, and part of those efficiencies also to simplify the work on a day-to-day basis of our, I mean, front office and technicians on the field. Really, it's copper has an impact, but it's really not the only driver of those efficiencies.
If I may add on that. It's a program which is very well managed, and as Christel mentioned, it's more than 350 initiatives targeting all cost buckets and all efficiency levels with a monthly follow-up on each of them. It's tackling really everything, as we mentioned, from operations improvement to sourcing and procurement as well. It's quite diversified, let's say. We have a good pipe.
Andrew, just to precise, the EUR 300 million is RTC and wholesale, so comparable with EUR 800. We see -EUR 825, 2028, -EUR 300, EUR 300 later on. You see by end of 2028, we would have done very large part of the transition when it come to the copper-related revenues.
After 2028, the cost of maintenance of copper network will become marginal.
Meini, Spain?
Yes. Yes, thank you for your question. I can confirm that the EBITDA development not, is not due to the investment in the shoes. Even so, this is a low-cost merchandising that is very successful in Spain. Look, if you look, talk about bottom line, I think we should focus on cash flows, operating cash flows, and total free cash flow. Here, the guidance is mid to high single digit. I think that reflects very well the business performance. With the interest rate reduction that we are expecting after closing of the deal, this further increases. That will be very material. Having said that, EBITDA is affected by accounting effects.
I mentioned before, there is a non-cash accounting effect of around EUR 200 million within the period. Obviously, this is considered in this low single-digit guidance. W e are talking about the guidance. You know me for quite some years. We are here to meet and hopefully exceed the guidance, and that's our aspiration.
Thank you. We'll move from a question from the online audience. We have a question from Fernando Cordero. Please go ahead, Fernando.
Thank you for taking my two questions. The first question is on Spain as well, and I wanted to check at which extent the guidance that you have provided is already including further efficiencies in your mobile network. You are currently having a negotiating agreement with Vodafone España. Just to understand if you are including further, let's say, a scope of the RAN sharing. The second question is related also with CapEx, as in previous ones, but on a more broader basis.
Given all the discussion around consolidation at the European level, I would like to understand, which is your view on or what is the risk that you perceive on your long-term CapEx target of 14% if in market consolidation is going to happen, given that presumably the core objective of the regulators, if they allow consolidation, is to increase CapEx in the sector. Just to understand your views on that front. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Fernando. Good questions. I will let, of course, Meinrad comment, but on the efficiencies, w e have a RAN sharing with Vodafone in Spain. As we said, this is a plan that does not assume any capitalistic change in the way we drive. Now, of course, any efficiency we would have on the RAN and the radio network, we would definitely include it, and we need absolutely more efficiency.
Well, thank you. There is no extraordinary operation included in our business plan. It's business as usual. Obviously, we're working continuously on increasing efficiencies in our networks, but if you refer to so-called RAN Co project, it's not on the table right now.
When it comes to our CapEx guidance and national consolidation, as we said, first of all, the plan does not include any beyond, of course, the MásMóvil reconsolidation in the group, but that's well understood. Any consolidation is something, if we talk about France, to be specific, in any case, the discussion we would have in the context of convincing the authorities to allow for transaction, would be based first and foremost on synergies that would be created from the synergy from the transaction that are not included in the plan.
In the end, the outcome would be that we would have to make a decision as a company to move forward or not in a transaction where we know the transaction creates synergies. As part of the social contract, I would say, with the countries to move to that consolidation, we would turn back some of those synergies to investment in the network for cybersecurity. I mean, we can be creative. It's not something that we don't foresee would change our guidance because it's too early to comment, and in any case, it would be deal-by-deal specific.
We'll take our next question from Eric, row number 2.
Eric Ravary, CIC . Three quick questions if I may. First one is on the savings in France. What is your forecast of number of employees in France in 2028 compared with today? Second question is on could you remind us the cost of maintenance of the copper network in France in 2025? Last question is on your guidance for free cash flow all-in. Could we have the comparable basis in 2025? It was EUR 2.8 billion, excluding Spain, but what is the figure, including Spain on a comparable basis, so after the setup of the FiberCo?
Thank you. On the efficiency plan and your question around the number of employees we would have, first of all, we don't forecast the number of employees. What we do is to make sure we forecast for what are the skills we need, and the agreement we signed with employee representatives early in 2025 was exactly that. We looked at, I mean, end of 2024, the three-year journey, and we highlighted what are the type of jobs that as a company, we will need less, what are the type of job that we will need more. As part of the agreement, we have this early retirement program, which is voluntary, so it's difficult to anticipate.
Now, we have a track record, and we make estimates on statistically who volunteers for this plan. Again, we have no commitment. We are very committed on the efficiency based on the track record regarding early retirement adoption. A key element on, I will say, the ability to drive this plan with a return financially, is, of course, to automate and to limit the replacement. As part of our plan, we also plan to hire cyber experts, AI, data, and young talents, because we need to make sure we prepare for the future. Of course, we manage the cost, but we're not counting employees as we plan for the future.
We're really looking at the skills that are critical to execute the plan. On the cost of maintenance of copper.
We are not precise that much. I mean, as I say, the roundabout savings that we see, Jérôme, on your control for the next few years is around EUR 100 million, and post that, as you say, it would be a marginal cost moving forward.
Yes. It decreased quite a lot along the past plan already.
Decreased already.
O n your third question, so the EUR 2.8 billion for 2025 is around about the good comparable basis. The OCF for Orange is close to breakeven in 2025, roundabout.
Okay, we'll take our next question, row number three from Jeremy.
Hi, Jeremy Ben Nathan from New Street Research. Just a question on Spain. I think you said that your guidance assumes that Spanish market remains competitive. One of your competitors has recently said that they're rolling fiber at less than EUR 50 per home passed, and they're materially increasing their footprint at the moment. Do you see a risk to that, of them driving retail prices down in fiber, and how that might impact your guidance there?
Meinrad?
Thank you very much. Look, we are living in a very competitive market in Spain with a lot of players, convergent players. We have around eight convergent players with more than EUR 100 million of revenues, and we have ultra-low-cost players that are very aggressive now, but they have been very aggressive for years.
They are addressing a segment that, in terms of revenue, is probably not higher than 10%-15%. Digi, for instance, as the main player in this field, has probably overall revenue market share of not more than 5% in the country. We are 8x, 9x bigger than Digi currently. How do we plan to generate value? Focus on quality of service, on premium services. Overall, we prioritize value over volume. Very simple. How do we create an equation for our clients that is comparable, also attractive on economic terms? Very simple. We offer bundles, and we offer value through adjacencies. For instance, we have a consumer finance unit that enables financing of devices of up to 48 months at zero interest.
If you calculate a premium handset valued at EUR 1,500, the value of getting free financing is incredible. We are matching with adjacencies the benefits of ultra-low cost just on basic connectivity. I think it's much smarter to do that than reducing prices on core connectivity. By the way, we think we have to position core connectivity much higher, at a much higher level. This has some, let's say, positive side effects. We are number one retailer in Spain in a lot of categories, like, say, consumer electronics. For instance, last year, we have sold more than 5 million devices, growing above 20% year-on-year. We will continue to grow that because it creates loyalty.
If you have a client that has various devices with us, a consumer financed, the probability that he will leave or she will leave is very much reduced. Our strategy is loyalty, value creation through adjacencies, and as you have seen, it has paid off. We have been in a market where we compete with convergent offers at EUR 11 without VAT, with our FMC ARPU of EUR 52, and we have been able to maintain it stable. I believe that are very satisfactory results, and we will continue like that.
Do we have more questions in the room? Yes, Akhil.
Hi, thanks. Maybe if I can ask a follow-up. It's just on your EPS guidance. Just reconciling that to cash flow. If we take the 10% CAGR you're guiding to on EPS, it implies, I think, roughly EUR 3 billion of net income in 2028. Whereas if I take the free cash flow, all in, you're at EUR 4.5 billion. If I take out minorities, maybe it's EUR 4-ish. Could you just maybe help us understand that bridge? Obviously, in the long term, you'd expect maybe some normalization. Just to better understand, why is there such a big gap between your adjusted earnings and free cash flow? Thanks.
Laurent, this is for you.
Yep. Very, very question. Of course, in the net income, there is plenty of non-cash item as well. The key difference is coming from the fact that there is still large D&A in our net income, which is waiting on our net income, which are non-cash. Against that, we are reducing our CapEx from 17%, 16% down to 14%, and this is what is impacting the cash. That would be the first key block of difference between the two parameters.
Can I maybe just ask? I mean, sorry, I guess it's very hard for us to anticipate the trends in depreciation over time. Do you have some thoughts around when that might start to normalize, when that heavier depreciation starts to better mirror your CapEx?
Well, it's, I mean, it's all depends. There is, I mean, the fiber, by definition, a fiber CapEx, and we have been investing, I remind, EUR 13 billion of fiber in France. This is meant to be for the next 40 years, so the depreciation will be very long, very flat. When it comes to network equipment, the lifetime is 5-7 years, so this will be a kind of much shorter depreciation. Don't expect to have a massive rundown of that. It will be more long-term in terms of rundown than short- to mid-term.
Josh, number two.
Thanks. It's a somewhat related question, actually, but your all-in free cash flow guidance doesn't include minority dividend payments, so I think you indicated that would be growing. I assume that growth is part of the reason for the gap between the 10% EPS and 12% free cash flow. Firstly, could you give us a bit of a say on how much the minority dividend leakage is assumed to be growing by over the guidance periods? Related to that, given this very strong growth you're seeing in Africa, Middle East, and the free cash flow generation, is there an argument for increasing your stakes there or fully consolidating the businesses? I remember speaking about Orange previously, you said, "If we like these assets, we want to own them fully." Why is that different in Africa versus Europe? Thanks.
T hat's an important question. In Middle East and Africa, as we said, we have a portfolio, diversified portfolio of countries. Every country has a different setup. In some of those countries, we own 100%. That's the case of Egypt. In other countries, we have minority shareholders. Sometime, we are listed also. Those minority shareholders, they are local. Sometime, the government is a shareholder, and this is, for us, very important. Because that sends the message of value being created locally, and in the current environment, as we said, the strength of our multi-local model is very important to navigate the geopolitics. Keeping these minority interests is very important for sustainable value creation in those countries. We don't plan to change this drastically.
We may have, and we have the opportunity in some countries to move slightly. We've done it in Ivory Coast a few years back, actually three years ago, where the government owned 20%. They decided to go public. That type of transaction happened, but generally speaking, we plan to keep the same level of minority interest. When it comes to the cash and EPS.
Yep. When it comes to the cash, the minority interest that we paid in 2025 is around EUR 430 million, and we are expecting this to develop, of course, with the business around mid-single digits. That's the kind of expectation we have on this perspective.
Okay, maybe we can take a few more questions. Ondrej, row number four.
Thank you. Maybe a bit of a conceptual question, but how important is it for you to be the biggest player in France? Because obviously, this is part of your slides. It's part of kind of the DNA of the company. The reason I'm asking really is related to our debate yesterday around potential issues from a regulatory perspective around consolidation, jurisdiction, et cetera. Because clearly, there's a very obvious way to kind of bypass this by making this a very French deal. I'm just wondering is there a world in which somehow f there are issues at the E.C. level, et cetera, the deal is repackaged, restructured, and it becomes French only, in which case, however, you would no longer be the biggest player in the country.
How important is that for you?
First of all, we're number one in France, and that's very important for us to stay number one in France because there is no magic in our industry. We are a business of fixed cost, so if you're number one, you create more value than if you're number two and number three, and we see that across the board with all our countries. That's why we want to be a number one player. It's not just we want to claim number one, it's because that really creates more value. Now, when it comes to the potential transaction in France, I mean, there's one player for sale, so all type of combinations are possible. Today there's an offer on the table that's a consortium offer between the three of us.
Now, nothing guarantees that indeed this transaction will go to an end, and maybe there will be other scenarios. If you look at the three players in France, and if you just focus on antitrust authorities, we are not the only international player in France. Take a player like Iliad, they are under for whatever they do in France would be, I mean, looked at from Brussels. It's not just a discussion of Orange. We will see, but we really don't take that into account. We know there's gonna be antitrust authorities reviewing any type of transaction. Our focus is Orange trajectory. Of course, we are number one.
We want to stay number one, organic, and of course, taking opportunities as they appear to create synergies and to continue to have a sustainable business in France.
We'll take a last question from Matthieu.
Thank you. Just a quick one. The dividend of EUR 0.85, you said that's a floor, and should we understand that's a floor, including any potential deal in France? That's the first question. Maybe a point of clarification on the again, the France EBITDA guidance. On your slide, you have copper resell, EUR 0.2 billion increase between 2028 and 2025. That EUR 0.2, should I understand that that's the net of the copper resell and the cost of decommissioning, or it's completely different? Thank you.
On the dividend, as we said, it's a floor for 2028. We were very clear that as part of our cash allocation, we really want to focus on deleverage.
From the impact of the Spanish transaction so that we could do a transaction in France based on debt. That's why a big part of the increase of cash creation in the next few years will go to deleverage. That's very important for us. On the dividend, we're not commenting beyond 2028. It's too early to comment on if and when there would be a France transaction, what would be the impact. Again, this transaction, our objective is to do it debt-based and not to impact, I would say, shareholder allocation. On the copper.
On the copper, just to be precise, the EUR 200 million is an increase of the revenue coming from the copper resale between end 2025-end 2028 , and, as we said, as the precision of the dismantling assets are below EBITDA.
Very, very last question from Nick.
Sorry, there have not been any questions on French consolidation, so maybe I could ask one just on the timing. Is timing getting difficult now for French consolidation? It's taken a long time to get to here. That's 4-5 months. We've always been told it's best to do it pre-French presidential election. How difficult is this getting now, and how quickly do you have to move, do you think? What are the actual barriers in terms of timing, please?
First, I mean, you say it's taking time, but if you look at the challenge of putting together an offer between three competitors and then the challenge of going through due diligence for such a complex transaction, I don't think we want to rush it, and because we're talking about a lot of money. Yes, there's value creation at stake, but it's a lot of money we're talking about, so that's why we take the necessary time. Now, when it comes to the execution, if we would come to an agreement, part of it does not depend on us because it's the antitrust process, and we don't know when that would conclude.
I'm not gonna, I mean, instruct the antitrust authorities, knowing that we haven't started any process, so it's easy from their side to say, "Look, we don't know." Of course, as long as the deal creates value, the deal creates long-term value for France, the objective would be to convince elected politicians, I mean, whether or not it's before or after they would have their word. It starts first and foremost by agreeing between the different players.
Thank you. This conclude our Q&A session. I will now hand it back to Christel for any concluding remarks.
Yes, thank you. Thank you. Whoops. Thank you, Constance. Thank you all for your participation, whether you were online or in the room. As you understood, we are very enthusiastic and committed to the execution of our plan, and I look forward to now going real life on everything we discussed. I'm sure we will have discussion with all our quarterly and half results moving forward. I know we will have roadshows and discussion as well. Thanks a lot for being here today and online, for those who were online. Thank you.