Telecom revenue growth

Telecom EBITDA +1.0% and total OpFCF +14.1%

€3.7 billion of available liquidity²

AMSTERDAM–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Regulatory News:

Altice Europe N.V. (Euronext: ATC and ATCB) today announces financial and operating results for the quarter ended June 30, 2020.

Patrick Drahi, Altice Europe founder: “In France, we have maintained growth in our core telecom business in the second quarter year over year, including residential service revenue growth once again. We ended the second quarter with a strong performance and improved trajectory, despite COVID-19 related impacts on areas such as roaming revenue, low margin equipment sales and a significant slowdown in the wider media business. In the second quarter of 2020, we closed the transformational Fastfiber partnership in Portugal and extended the Altice Corporate Finance facility, meaning that almost €500 million of the €700 million targeted interest savings program have been realized. The Group monetized its stake in Altice USA and has repaid €1.2 billion of debt since April 2020. The Group’s diversified capital structure has no material maturity before 2025 and significant available liquidity of €3.7 billion. Overall, we have achieved a strong performance in the second quarter, especially given the wider circumstances. We reiterate our FY 2020 guidance and continue to focus on deleveraging through growing revenue, EBITDA and cash flow.”

Altice Europe Q2 2020 Key Financial Highlights

• Telecom revenue excluding equipment and roaming grew by +4.2% YoY (vs. +4.4% in Q1 2020).
• Residential service revenue excluding roaming out grew by +1.5% YoY (vs. +2.7% in Q1 2020).
• Telecom EBITDA grew by +1.0% YoY (vs. +1.9% in Q1 2020), Telecom EBITDA margin was 41.9% (vs. +38.4% in Q1 2020).
• Total accrued capital expenditure was €663 million in Q2 2020.
• Consequently, Operating Free Cash Flow amounted to €776 million in Q2 2020, growth of +14.1% YoY.

Altice Europe Q2 2020 Key Operational Highlights

• Altice France achieved a strong financial performance in Q2 2020, with revenue growth in both the residential service and business services segments:
  • The residential fixed base grew by +37k net additions, with +100k fibre net additions and 48% of the total fixed subscriber base on fibre. Residential mobile postpaid base net additions were +99k customers.
  • Altice France reported Telecom revenue growth of +2.1% YoY and Telecom EBITDA growth of +3.1% YoY in Q2 2020. Residential service revenue, excluding roaming out, grew by +2.2% YoY (vs. +2.6% in Q1 2020).
• Altice International Telecom revenue, excluding low margin equipment revenue and roaming revenue, declined by -1.9% YoY in Q2 2020 (vs. +3.0% in Q1 2020), whilst Altice International residential service revenue declined by -0.2% excluding roaming (vs. +3.1% in Q1 2020).
  • The residential fixed base grew by +17k customers, with +38k fibre customers. Residential mobile postpaid base net additions were +12k customers.

Capital Structure Key Highlights – including subsequent events

• Total consolidated Altice Europe net debt was €29.0 billion (€28.6billion pro forma for the €375 million earn-out due in December 2021 related to the Fastfiber partnership) at the end of Q2 2020.
• On July 27, 2020, Altice Europe announced two agreements with Mediapro. Firstly, for the season 2020/21, Altice Europe will resell the UEFA rights to Mediapro in exchange for Altice Europe’s right to resell Mediapro’s TELEFOOT channel (including the main football matches for French Ligue 1 and Ligue 2). This will allow Mediapro to broadcast the UEFA Champions League and Europa League. Both the RMC Sport channel and Mediapro’s TELEFOOT channel will broadcast the two competitions from October 2020. SFR will offer all of the football to its customers with RMC Sport, TELEFOOT, Canal+ and BeIN SPORTS. SFR will be the only operator in France to offer its subscribers all French (Ligue 1, Ligue 2) and European (UEFA Champions League, UEFA Europa League, English Premier League, Spanish and Italian championships) football. Secondly, for the seasons 2021/22, 2022/23 and 2023/24, Altice Europe entered into a distribution agreement with Mediapro to resell the TELEFOOT channel (including the main football matches for French Ligue 1 and Ligue 2) with a revenue share mechanism. This is expected to generate additional revenues for the Altice France residential segment. With this agreement, Altice Europe maintains the commitment to improve Altice TV cash flow trends, approaching break-even, while SFR customers will continue to benefit from the best football offer in France.
• On July 22, 2020, Altice International repaid $385 million (€342 million equivalent) 7.625% 2025 notes. In addition to this, the Group has bought back €140 million of debt at Altice International, since April 2020. In combination with the Altice Corporate Financing (“ACF”) facility partial repayment announced on May 19, 2020, the Group has repaid €1.2 billion of debt since April 2020.
• On July 2, 2020, the transfer of approximately 9% of the share capital of Altice France S.A. from Altice Europe to Altice France Holding S.A. was completed, in-line with the previously stated objective as part of the January 2020 Altice France refinancing.
• On June 22, 2020, Altice Europe completed the sale of all of its remaining indirect stake in Altice USA, commensurate with its previously stated strategy. In total, Altice Europe sold 24.2 million shares of Altice USA Class A common stock for a total consideration of approximately €534 million. Altice Europe retained approximately 0.3 million Altice USA shares of Class A common stock.
• On May 19, 2020, Altice Europe announced the extension of the maturity and a partial repayment of the ACF facility. Altice Europe repaid €668 million of the ACF facility with cash available on balance sheet. After this repayment, the ACF facility has been reduced from €1,728 million to €1,060 million. The coupon has been reduced from 6.85% to 6.625%. Total annual interest savings pro forma for this transaction alone are €48 million, through a combination of average cost of debt and absolute debt reduction. Following significant refinancing activity in January 2020 and the partial repayment and extension of the ACF facility, the Group has already achieved €470 million annual savings out of the previously stated target of €700 million annual savings, pro forma for the previously announced refinancing transactions.
• On May 19, 2020, NextRadioTV announced the launch of a restructuring plan to take into account the changing media environment and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the advertising market. This plan, based on voluntary adherence, aims at reducing the employee workforce and the use of occasional workers, freelancers and consultants.
• On May 14, 2020, Altice France announced that it would transfer Libération, the daily newspaper, to a non-profit foundation.
• On April 20, 2020, Altice Europe announced the creation of Fastfiber (formerly known as Altice Portugal FTTH). Fastfiber is by far the largest FTTH wholesaler in Portugal and comprises of all MEO’s fibre assets including FTTH and dark fibre. Fastfiber is the result of a partnership that follows the successful completion of the transaction announced in December 2019 of Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners’ acquisition of a 49.99% stake in Fastfiber. Fastfiber will sell wholesale services to all operators at the same financial terms and MEO will sell technical services to Fastfiber for the construction, maintenance, and subscriber connection to the fibre network. The transaction valued Fastfiber at €4.6 billion on a 100% basis, representing an EBITDA multiple of 20x. The final cash consideration received at closing was €1,573 million for the sale of 49.99% in Fastfiber with further payments as follows, on a 49.99% basis: €375 million in December 2021 and €375 million in December 2026 subject to some performance ratchets.
• On November 25, 2019, Altice Europe announced the acquisition of 100% of Covage, the 4^th largest fibre wholesale operator in France, by SFR FTTH. The transaction is expected to close in the second half of 2020.

Guidance

• For the full year 2020, the Group expects to:
  • Accelerate residential revenue growth in its key geographies;
  • Grow Altice Europe revenue and EBITDA;
  • Further delever the Telecom Perimeter, target leverage of 4.0x to 4.5x net debt to EBITDA.
• In the mid-term, the Group targets organic free cash flow³ of more than €1 billion.
• The Group continues to assess the potential impacts of the pandemic carefully.
  • Main negative financial impacts include: delays in FTTH construction during lockdown which the Group expects to catch-up; sale of equipment while shops were closed; roaming; advertising severely affected.
  • The guidance assumes lock-downs were lifted during Q2 2020 and a gradual economic recovery thereafter.

Conference call details

The company will host a conference call and webcast today, July 30, 2020 at 6:30pm CEST (5:30pm BST, 12:30pm EDT).

Dial-in Access telephone numbers:

Participant Toll Free Dial-In Number: +1 (833) 968-2322

Participant International Dial-In Number: +1 (778) 560-2842

Conference ID: 5519489

A live webcast of the presentation will be available on the following website:

https://event.on24.com/wcc/r/2400355/E8A600F92EE46F06B3BC9D311E00628A

The presentation for the conference call will be made available prior to the call on our investor relations website:

http://altice.net/investor-relations

About Altice Europe

Altice Europe (ATC & ATCB), listed on Euronext Amsterdam, is a convergent leader in telecoms, content, media, entertainment and advertising. Altice Europe delivers innovative, customer-centric products and solutions that connect and unlock the limitless potential of its over 30 million customers over fibre networks and mobile broadband. Altice Europe is also a provider of enterprise digital solutions to millions of business customers. Altice Europe innovates with technology, research and development and enables people to live out their passions by providing original content, high-quality and compelling TV shows, and international, national and local news channels. Altice Europe delivers live broadcast premium sports events and enables its customers to enjoy the most well-known media and entertainment.

Financial Presentation

Altice Europe and its subsidiaries have operated for several years and have from time to time made significant equity investments in a number of cable and telecommunication businesses in various jurisdictions. Therefore, in order to facilitate an understanding of Altice Europe’s results of operations, we have presented and discussed the pro-forma consolidated financial information of Altice Europe – giving effect to each such significant acquisition and disposal as if such acquisitions and disposals had occurred by January 1, 2019. Therefore financials for Altice Europe for the quarters ended June 30, 2019 and June 30, 2020 exclude the press magazine Groupe L’Express (following disposal on July 30, 2019) and the newspaper Libération (following announcement of transfer to a non-profit foundation on May 14, 2020).

This press release contains measures and ratios (the “Non-GAAP measures”), including Adjusted EBITDA, Capital Expenditure (“Capex”) and Operating Free Cash Flow, that are not required by, or presented in accordance with, IFRS⁴ or any other generally accepted accounting standards. We present Non-GAAP measures because we believe that they are of interest to the investors and similar measures are widely used by certain investors, securities analysts and other interested parties as supplemental measures of performance and liquidity. The Non-GAAP measures may not be comparable to similarly titled measures of other companies or have limitations as analytical tools and should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for analysis of our, or any of our subsidiaries’, operating results as reported under IFRS or other generally accepted accounting standards. Non-GAAP measures such as Adjusted EBITDA are not measurements of our, or any of our subsidiaries’, performance or liquidity under IFRS or any other generally accepted accounting principles, including U.S. GAAP. In particular, you should not consider Adjusted EBITDA as an alternative to (a) operating profit or profit for the period (as determined in accordance with IFRS) as a measure of our, or any of our operating entities’, operating performance, (b) cash flows from operating, investing and financing activities as a measure of our, or any of our subsidiaries’, ability to meet its cash needs or (c) any other measures of performance under IFRS or other generally accepted accounting standards. In addition, these measures may also be defined and calculated differently than the corresponding or similar terms under the terms governing our existing debt.

Adjusted EBITDA is defined as operating income before depreciation and amortization, other expenses and income (capital gains, non-recurring litigation, restructuring costs) and share-based expenses and after operating lease expenses. This may not be comparable to similarly titled measures used by other entities. Further, this measure should not be considered as an alternative for operating income as the effects of depreciation, amortization and impairment excluded from this measure do ultimately affect the operating results, which is also presented within the annual consolidated financial statements in accordance with IAS 1 – Presentation of Financial Statements. All references to EBITDA in this press release are to Adjusted EBITDA, as defined in this paragraph.

Capital expenditure (Capex), while measured in accordance with IFRS principles is not a term that is defined in IFRS. However, Altice Europe’s management believe it is an important indicator for the Group as the profile varies greatly between activities:

• The fixed business has fixed Capex requirements that are mainly discretionary (network, platforms, general), and variable Capex requirements related to the connection of new customers and the purchase of Customer Premise Equipment (TV decoder, modem, etc.).
• Mobile Capex is mainly driven by investment in new mobile sites, upgrade to new mobile technology and licenses to operate; once engaged and operational, there are limited further Capex requirements.
• Other Capex: Mainly related to costs incurred in acquiring content rights.

Operating free cash flow (OpFCF) is defined as Adjusted EBITDA less Capex. This may not be comparable to similarly titled measures used by other entities. Further, this measure should not be considered as an alternative for operating cash flow as presented in the consolidated statement of cash flows in accordance with IAS 1 – Presentation of Financial Statements. It is simply a calculation of the two above mentioned non-GAAP measures.

Adjusted EBITDA and similar measures are used by different companies for differing purposes and are often calculated in ways that reflect the circumstances of those companies. You should exercise caution in comparing Adjusted EBITDA as reported by us to Adjusted EBITDA of other companies. Adjusted EBITDA as presented herein differs from the definition of “Consolidated Adjusted EBITDA” for purposes of any of the indebtedness of the Group. The financial information presented in this press release, including but not limited to the quarterly financial information, pro forma financial information as well as Adjusted EBITDA and OpFCF, is unaudited. In addition, the presentation of these measures is not intended to and does not comply with the reporting requirements of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) and will not be subject to review by the SEC; compliance with its requirements would require us to make changes to the presentation of this information.

Financial and Statistical Information and Comparisons

Financial and statistical information is for the quarter ended June 30, 2020, unless otherwise stated, and any year over year comparisons are for the quarter ended June 30, 2019.

Regulated Information

This press release contains inside information within the meaning of Article 7(1) of the EU Market Abuse Regulation.

Altice Europe Summary Financial Information

Notes to Summary Financials

Altice Europe KPIs

Notes to KPIs tables

Altice Europe Financial and Operational Review by Segment

For the quarter ended June 30, 2020 compared to the quarter ended June 30, 2019

France (Altice France including SFR)

Altice France reported residential service revenue growth in Q2 2020. This performance was underpinned by a sustained focus on operations and significant and ongoing investment in proprietary infrastructure.

In Q2 2020, SFR continued to invest in its proprietary infrastructure to further improve customer satisfaction and enhance its position in the growing fibre wholesale market. At the end of Q2 2020, SFR had 17.5 million homes passed (FTTH/FTTB), an increase of more than a million homes passed compared to Q1 2020. Altice France had 5,515 fibre municipalities at the end of Q2 2020 (vs. 4,918 in Q1 2020).

Altice France continues to invest in its 4G network, with 46,176 4G systems activated (1,597 new units in Q2 2020). The current 4G coverage of the SFR Mobile network reaches 99% of the national population (32,255 municipalities). Altice France continues to deploy 4G and new radio sites in white areas.

Contacts

Contacts – Altice Europe


Head of Investor Relations Altice Europe
Sam Wood: +41 79 538 66 82 / sam.wood@altice.net

Head of Communications Altice Europe
Arthur Dreyfuss: +41 79 946 4931 / arthur.dreyfuss@altice.net

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