Bouygues Group on Wednesday revealed that its telecoms division swung to a net loss in 2014, as its revenue and mobile customer base edged down slightly.
Bouygues Telecom ended December with 13.5 million customers, up by 393,000 on last year. The growth was driven by the addition of 415,000 fixed-line customers, offset partially by a 22,000 fall in mobile subscribers.
The decline was caused by a 242,000 fall in prepaid customers, which more than cancelled out a 220,000 increase in contract customers. As a r esult, Bouygues ended 2014 with 11.12 million mobile subscribers, compared to 11.14 million at the end of 2013.
On the upside, 28% of Bouygues Telecom’s mobile customers now use 4G, up 9% on last year.
"Bouygues Telecom’s 4G customers are the leaders in terms of mobile data consumption on the French market and account for 34% of 4G customers in France," said the company, in a statement, noting that its 4G customers consume 2.2 GB of data per month on average.
Meanwhile, revenue at Bouygues Telecom fell 5% to €4.4 billion from €4.7 billion a year ago. The operator also swung to a €62 million full-year operating loss, and a full-year net loss of €41 million.
Going forward, Bouygues Telecom said it expects stable EBITDA this year and a slight rise in capex driven by its mobile network-sharing deal with Numericable-SFR. It also expects the deal to result in a €200 million writedown that will affect Bouygues’ group operating profit in 2015.
