Solid Q1 EBITDAaL growth Updated dividend in the COVID-19 context - Seite 3

Michaël Trabbia, Chief Executive Officer, commented:

Everybody has been profoundly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. In this global crisis context, our main priority is the protection of our employees, our customers, suppliers and subcontractors, as we comply fully with the decisions and recommendations of the competent authorities. In addition, we concentrated our efforts on ensuring service continuity as connectivity is more than ever critical for Belgian consumers, businesses, hospitals and administration. Finally, we believe we have an important societal role to support the country in this difficult time. We proactively promoted the “StayHome” message, we supported our customers with a dedicated platform and additional data, and we helped the government monitor mobility via anonymised data. We also provided concrete and meaningful support to hospitals and nursing homes, with masks, cyber-security and communication solutions. Orange Belgium together with the members of its Executive Committee in their personal capacity made a joint donation to finance a COVID-19 middle care unit.

On 9 March, we launched GO, our revamped mobile portfolio, introducing exclusive mobile family discounts, and confirming once again our Bold Challenger position. Our Love Duo and Trio convergent offers continued to attract many new customers.

However, the lockdown measures have impacted our sales, with the temporary closure of the shops, only partially mitigated by the increase of other channels, mainly digital and telesales. We are preparing to reopen our shops when it becomes possible, with all the necessary protection equipment and sanitary measures.

In April, the regulator submitted its draft decision on the wholesale cable tariffs to the European Commission, including amongst others, a major change in the methodology of cost recovery compared to the last draft decision that would be massively detrimental for customers. This major change in the final steps of the process would mean significantly over-compensating cable owners’ actual costs. In addition, the assumptions made lead to a far excessive and unjustified increase of the wholesale tariffs by up to 25% over time. As such, the draft decision would necessarily lead to significant price increases year after year in the Belgian broadband market, although it is already amongst the most expensive broadband markets in Europe. In the interest of Belgium customers, we urge the European Commission and the regulators to materially improve the draft decision, based on the reality of the costs and avoiding any overcompensation.