Vivendi stalls for Tim and “temporarily” entrusts Flavio Cattaneo's powers to President Arnaud de Puyfontaine, with the exception of those on security and Sparkle, entrusted ad interim to Vice President Giuseppe Recchi. The arrival of Amos Genish as Chief Operations Officer was decided by the operating president and communicated the following day to the Board of Directors on the half-yearly accounts, at least initially. Lastly, director Frédéric Crépin (Vivendi) leaves the control and risk committee (he is headed by independent director Camilla Antonini) and joins the strategic committee.
The board of directors of the national telephone battleship thus "acknowledged the start of management and coordination activities by Vivendi". And it approved the 2017 half-year report closed with revenues close to 10 billion (+7,4%) and Ebitda at 4,1 billion (+10,4%). In the second quarter alone, revenues amounted to 5 billion, up 6,4%. Coming to the individual business areas, the domestic customers division shows a turnover up by 3,4% and an Ebitda which recorded the best result ever with an increase of 5,6%. Even in fixed telephony, for the first time in 10 years, revenues from services grew. In the mobile sector, in three months (April-June) over 500 thousand new customers with Arpu growing to 12,5 euros (+4% versus the previous quarter and +3% versus 2016).
Debt stops at 25,1 billion, down by 15 million compared to December and by 2,4 billion compared to June last year.
With these numbers, Flavio Cattaneo, who holds a conference call with analysts on Friday morning, has a good time saying “I leave a company better than I found it”. "The positive first half results lay the foundations for a further phase of relaunching the group" promises the operating president de Puyfontaine instead, assuring that "Tim will continue to invest in infrastructure and in the development of convergent services and will further consolidate its technological leadership ”.
Tim's new watchword will therefore be "convergence" and we will see if the group will really turn the page or if it will find itself entangled in new difficulties after twenty years of continuous torment.
(Updated Friday July 28 at 17pm)
