Proximus TV growth fails to offset prepaid mobile and fixed voice losses

Proximus’s TV offering

Growth in Belgian service provider Proximus’s TV and broadband subscribers and revenues failed to compensate for a decline in its prepaid mobile and fixed voice base and declining inbound mobile revenues last year, leading the company to post a drop in domestic revenues of 1.7%.

Proximus grew its TV base by 22,000 last year to reach 1.642 million in Q4, up 1.4% year-on-year.

The number of fixed internet customers rose by 1.5% over the same period to reach 2.089million. however, the company’s fixed voice base declined by 5.8% to 2.401 million.

Mobile post-paid customers rise by 2.4% to reach 4.111 million, while prepaid subscriptions declined by 12.8% to 717,000.

The company counted 1.114 million convergent homes and small offices at the end of the year, taking its penetration of total multiplay homes to 60.3%.

Proximus said its TV market share at the end of the year was 37.4% compared with 45.9% for fixed internet and 38.7% for mobile.

The company posted overall domestic sales of €4.386 billion for he year, down 1.7%, with domestic underlying revenue down 1.2%. Domestic EBITDA was however up.

Group revenue was down 2.1% to €5.686 billion, while EBITDA was up 0.3% to €1.87 billion.

“Supported by our appealing year-end campaign, we maintained a good customer momentum for Internet, TV and Mobile postpaid in the last quarter of 2019. Our segmentation strategy again proved successful in a very competitive market, with a growing number of Households signing up for converged offers, with especially the EPIC and Minimus packs having strong traction. By end-2019, over 60% of our Household customer base was convergent. In spite of an increasing number of ‘skinny bundles’ offered on the market, we kept a strong position in the low-end segment through our Scarlet brand, with its attractive no-frills offering appealing to customers looking for the best prices,” said CEO Guillaume Boutin.