{"id":12817,"date":"2013-04-24T14:30:42","date_gmt":"2013-04-24T12:30:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/?p=12817"},"modified":"2019-05-02T15:20:46","modified_gmt":"2019-05-02T13:20:46","slug":"sp-highlights-french-mobile-operator-troubles-takes-france-telecom-down-a-grade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/2013\/04\/sp-highlights-french-mobile-operator-troubles-takes-france-telecom-down-a-grade\/","title":{"rendered":"S&#038;P highlights French mobile operator troubles, takes France Telecom down a grade"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-12818 alignright\" alt=\"Orange-France-Telecom-logo\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/assets\/Orange-France-Telecom-logo.jpg\" width=\"371\" height=\"209\" \/>Citing concerns about mobile pricing pressure in the French market and an anticipated big drop in France Telecom \/ Orange\u2019s earnings, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/2013-04-22\/france-telecom-debt-rating-cut-by-s-p-on-wireless-tariff-decline.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">S&amp;P has decided to follow Fitch&#8217;s lead and cut France Telecom&#8217;s debt rating to BBB+<\/a>, the third lowest investment grade. This cut puts France Telecom somewhere in the middle of the European telco pack in terms of credit worthiness, as it&#8217;s now trailing the UK\u2019s Vodafone (deemed the most creditworthy) and in-line with Germany\u2019s Deutsche Telecom, but still better off than Spain\u2019s Telefonica.<\/p>\n<p>S&amp;P\u2019s \u2018intuition\u2019 seems to have been spot on because the telco<a href=\"http:\/\/www.marketwatch.com\/story\/france-telecom-earnings-drop-9-amid-price-war-2013-04-24\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> announced today a 9% drop in first quarter adjusted earnings, 5.9% drop in revenue and 6.2% in revenue at their mobile unit<\/a>. \u00a0Although their pricing problems due to an increasingly contentious competitive environment in France, France Telecom actually saw their revenues drop in many big countries.<\/p>\n<p>To turn things around, France Telecom is pinning their hopes on aggressive cost cutting as well as the roll-out of their high-speed, 4G wireless network.\u00a0 However, as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/2013\/04\/03\/bouygues-gearing-up-for-its-big-4g-launch-later-this-year\/\">Bouygues<\/a> and SFR are also rolling out their own 4G service this year, it\u2019s hard to see how this will be a competitive advantage for them. In addition, Orange plans to charge an additional 5 to 10 euros to customers with monthly bills between 30 to 50 euros who take the 4G service, hoping to generate a big revenue bump. \u00a0But, due to a continuing challenging competitive environment and the eventuality that 4G will become the norm and ultimately integrated into standard mobile service, any financial benefits are likely to be short-lived.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Citing concerns about mobile pricing pressure in the French market and an anticipated big drop in France Telecom \/ Orange\u2019s earnings, S&amp;P has decided to follow Fitch&#8217;s lead and cut France Telecom&#8217;s debt rating to BBB+, the third lowest investment grade. This cut puts France Telecom somewhere in the middle of the European telco pack<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":77,"featured_media":12818,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10564],"tags":[8546,8039,8435],"class_list":["post-12817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tech-2","tag-bouygues-en","tag-orange-en-2","tag-sfr-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/77"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12817"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12817\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}