Proximus Group has revealed its financial performance – revenue, growth in subscribers, ARPU, Capex and Opex – during the first quarter of 2024.
“Our excellent start into the year is ahead of our initial expectations. While we remain cautious at this point of the year, this set of results gives me great confidence in achieving our objectives set for 2024,” Guillaume Boutin, CEO of Proximus Group, said.
Broadband ARPU EUR 48.5
Fixed Voice ARPU EUR 28.9
Mobile postpaid ARPU EUR 19.3
Proximus Group’s revenue totaled EUR 1,504 million for the first quarter of 2024, a year-on-year growth of +1.2 percent or EUR 17 million.
Proximus’ Domestic segment grew its revenue to EUR 1,201 million, an increase of +4.5 percent or EUR 52 million.
Residential revenue totaled EUR 620 million, up +5.9 percent. This was mainly driven by a +6.5 percent increase for Customer Services revenue. The strong growth resulted from a +10.9 percent increase in Convergent revenue, with a sustained increase in the convergent customer base (+ 6.5 percent).
Revenue of the Business unit rose 3.1 percent. Business Services revenue rose 2.7 percent, with higher revenue from IT Services (+7.8 percent) and Fixed Data (+5.5 percent).
Proximus’ Wholesale unit posted revenue of EUR 59 million, –4.9 percent or EUR –3 million.
Proximus’ International segment posted EUR 316 million of revenue, a decrease of 10.3 percent, mainly on the account of lower margin services. Revenue from Communications & Data totaled EUR 197 million, down 9.9 percent as result of lower CPaaS SMS volumes following the move from SMS-only to Omnichannel solutions.
Proximus Group’s operating expenses increased to EUR 541 million in the first quarter of 2024, up by 5.1 percent.
Proximus Group’s Capex totaled EUR 294 million, EUR 17 million below the comparable period in 2023. This mainly reflects the lower Capex needs for Proximus’ own fiber build, while the Capex to connect and activate customers increases.
Proximus made an investment in the ongoing Mobile network (RAN) consolidation, and in IT & Digital customer experience.
The Fiber Joint-Ventures Fiberklaar and Unifiber are scaling up pace. Proximus own fiber deployment accounted for 21 percent of the total Capex against 26 percent in the same period in 2023. End-March 2024, Fiber works were ongoing in 159 cities and municipalities in Belgium.
Proximus fiber HP footprint was 31 percent end March 2024, reaching 1,841,000 premises with fiber. The footprint of “fiber in the street” increased to 36 percent. While the Capex for Proximus’ ower fiber build further decreased from its preak in 2022, the customer termination and activation Capex is rising with existing and new customers migrating to fiber.
Moreover, Capex reflects the mobile network (RAN) consolidation between Proximus and Orange Belgium, led by the created joint-operation Mwingz, as well as investments in IT and Digital customer experience.
