Orange ponownie o wpływie koronawirusa na biznes

Orange w raporcie o swoich wynikach opisał kolejny raz wpływ pandemii COVID-19 na sytuację operatora w nadchodzących miesiącach.

Oto pełna treść tej informacji:

Zmiany w organizacji życia publicznego związane z zagrożeniem koronawirusem zostały wdrożone w połowie marca, co oznacza, że wpływ pandemii w wynikach za pierwszy kwartał jest widoczny w niewielkim stopniu. W rezultacie wprowadzonych ograniczeń, zamknięta została niemal połowa sieci sprzedaży, a ruch w działających salonach jest znacząco mniejszy. Równocześnie, od połowy marca Orange podjął szereg działań zmierzających do ograniczenia wpływu pandemii na klientów: począwszy od zarządzania siecią w sposób, który pozwolił zapewnić ciągłość usług w warunkach znacząco zwiększonego ruchu, po akcje skierowane bezpośrednio do klientów, odpowiadające na większe zapotrzebowanie na przesył danych wynikające z wprowadzenia zdalnej pracy i nauki na masową skalę. 

W kolejnych miesiącach operator spodziewa się uwidocznienia wpływu koronawirusa na gospodarkę. Ograniczenia w przemieszczaniu się odbiją się na wpływach z roamingu, widoczny będzie wpływ ograniczenia w działalności sieci sprzedaży. Dalszy rozwój sytuacji zależy od czynników kluczowych dla całej gospodarki: jak długo potrwa izolacja, jak poradzi sobie z nią gospodarka oraz jaki skutek przyniosą zapowiadane przez rząd działania antykryzysowe. 

W związku z kryzysem spowodowanym pandemią COVID-19, zarząd wdraża środki  zapobiegawcze w wielu dziedzinach, by ograniczyć jego wpływ na wyniki firmy w kolejnych kwartałach.

COVID-19: what’s ahead for telecoms? A few thoughts after Q1 results

Jean-François FallacherFollow CEO at Orange Polska

Telecoms are more resilient than other businesses because our services are critical to everyone in these confinement times. Nevertheless Orange Polska’s business is significantly impacted by this crisis. And it seems that the coronavirus and the disruption that it generates for the economy are here to stay for quite some time.

For Orange Polska Q1 was really good. Year on year, we have increased both key indicators: revenues by almost 1% year on year and EBITDAaL by 6% year on year. Commercial results were strong, with 44 thousand fiber customers added, second-best quarter ever for fiber (now used by more than 560.000 consumers). For mobile services, we attracted 105 thousand postpaid customers last quarter, including 62 thousand devices users. This is a 3.7% growth year-on-year, higher than what was achieved in 2019. It is worth mentioning that net customer additions in mobile were strong in Q1 mainly thanks to our activity in January and February, while March was already affected by disruptions in our distribution network which is since then half closed. Those results prove that our value building strategy works and that the turnaround of Orange Polska is really well engaged. 

But nothing is ‘business as usual’ anymore.

For the past weeks, we have been focusing on providing connectivity to our customers and also extra tools to help them work, study remotely and stay in touch with their family and friends. We’ve been doing our best to ensure safety of our employees serving customers and safety of our customers who need to contact us in person. I want to pay credit to all my colleagues of Orange Polska who have shown an exceptional capacity to adapt quickly to the new situation. Since mid-March 85% of our colleagues are working from their homes to run our business. Broadband internet access and mobile services have never been more essential than today to all Polish people. Therefore a number of our colleagues in stores, in the intervention teams, in the installation teams, in our warehouses and various other key area of our business are working and exposing themselves to serve our customers and keep our networks running. They are specially taken care of and equipped with protective items to work the safest way possible. I want to thank them warmly for their daily engagement.

In these difficult times we have decided to help our customers by providing them additional 10GB data traffic for their mobile subscription, give access to a maximum number of channels to our TV customers – as most of us are staying at home - and give our fully digital Orange Flex offer for a symbolic 1 zloty for 2 months allowing students, pupils and teachers a “free” mobile internet access during this crisis.

But while connectivity is essential, this increased demand does not translate to an increase of our revenues. All of our postpaid customers and also big part of prepaid users have unlimited voice bundles so they are not paying more if they talk more on the phone or consume more data. In fixed internet there are obviously no caps on data consumption. At the same time, with the sharp increase of traffic, we had to invest faster and increase our networks capacity.

At this point, we have already seen COVID-19 heavily impacting roaming revenues, equipment and consumer traffic. Half of our stores located in shopping malls have been closed since mid-March, and the traffic in those which remain open has decreased by around 60% versus before the pandemic. Hundreds of employees of closed stores now work remotely as telesales consultants. Still, redirecting the traffic to remote channels does not compensate for the limitations of sales in our stores. Sales of devices and smartphones is especially affected.

In the long term, there might be some business opportunities as we believe that our customers will probably increasingly rely on a good and reliable high broadband connection. However, we are part of the economy, not a lonely island, and we are not immune to the financial issues that many businesses and people are now facing in Poland. We expect the impact of coronavirus on Polish economy to be very serious in Q2. The financial difficulties that our clients will likely face will impact us.

It is hard to assess the final impact of this crisis on us and on the telecom industry, and although we do have some benchmark from the past (for more in-depth view on this you can refer to this Analysis Mason report) we are wondering if the comparison with the 2008 crisis is really making sense as we do not really know what’s still ahead of us and the depth of the upcoming crisis. One thing is sure, it will be a major one. Therefore we have decided to undertake several actions to mitigate the expected adverse impacts on Orange Polska’s business and to maintain our 2020 EBITDAaL guidance.