Drahi's €20.4B SFR Sale: France Telecom Goes 4-to-3

Patrick Drahi finally got his price. On June 6, 2026, his Altice France signed a memorandum of understanding to sell SFR — France’s second-largest mobile carrier — to a consortium of Bouygues Telecom, the Free–iliad Group, and Orange for €20.35 billion ($23.44 billion), including assumed debt. The deal, if it clears antitrust review, will collapse France’s mobile market from four facilities-based operators to three for the first time since Iliad’s 2012 disruption.

It is the largest European telecom transaction since Vodafone’s £15 billion sale of its Italian unit, and one of the most structurally unusual M&A deals of the year: SFR is not being acquired as a going concern. It is being carved up, with assets, spectrum, and subscribers redistributed across all three buyers. Bloomberg first reported the agreed terms; CNBC confirmed the consortium structure the same day.

The price tag and how it gets split

The €20.35 billion enterprise value matches the consortium’s April 17, 2026 indicative offer almost exactly — a sign Drahi’s team ran out of leverage to push higher. Inside the consortium, the economics are pre-negotiated:

Buyer	Share of price	Implied EV (€B)	Primary assets received
Bouygues Telecom	42%	8.55	Full B2B business and customers; share of B2C and infrastructure
Free–iliad Group	31%	6.31	B2C subscribers, spectrum, infrastructure share
Orange	27%	5.49	B2C subscribers, spectrum, infrastructure share
Total	100%	20.35

Source: Consortium press release via Globe Newswire, June 6, 2026. Implied EV calculated from headline €20.35B and disclosed buyer shares.

Bouygues taking the entire B2B book — corporate, enterprise, and public-sector contracts — is the strategic centerpiece. SFR’s B2B unit is the larger and more cash-generative half of the business, and Bouygues Telecom’s enterprise franchise was a step behind both SFR and Orange at scale. The B2C carve-up across all three buyers is messier and is where the antitrust review will get crowded.

Why Drahi is selling: Altice’s debt overhang

The headline number is misleading without the debt context. Altice France went into 2024 carrying roughly €24 billion of net debt — a leverage profile built during Drahi’s debt-fueled rollups of the 2010s and that became unsustainable as interest rates reset higher. In 2024 the company put nine French accelerated safeguard plans in front of the Paris commercial court, restructuring €23.3 billion of funded debt and ultimately writing down €8.6 billion. A creditor group reported to include BlackRock, Fidelity, and PIMCO took a 45% equity stake; Drahi held 55%. TelcoTitans documented the restructuring; a Chapter 15 recognition in the Southern District of New York followed in February 2026.

The 2024 restructuring did two things. It made Altice France solvent, and it put a board of creditors at the table who were ready to monetize SFR at the first credible bid. The June 6 deal is, in substance, that monetization. One analyst framing calls it “a liquidation dressed as an M&A,” and the structure — three buyers, asset-by-asset division — supports that read.

SFR’s financials going into the deal

Altice France disclosed FY2025 results on April 28, 2026: €9.229 billion in revenue, €2.932 billion in EBITDA (a 31.8% margin), and €1.398 billion of operating free cash flow. The trajectory matters more than the level — Q1 2025 revenue was down 6.2% year over year, and Q1 EBITDA was down 11.8%. Subscriber losses across fixed and mobile drove the decline. At a €20.35 billion enterprise value, the buyers are paying roughly 6.9× FY2025 EBITDA — well below the 8–10× multiples European telecom assets commanded before rate normalization.

Source: Altice France Q4 & FY2025 results, Apr 28, 2026. Q4 EBITDA implied from FY total minus disclosed Q1–Q3.

The 4-to-3 antitrust precedent

Brussels is the choke point. European Commission policy on mobile mergers has been the most restrictive in the developed world. In 2016, the Commission blocked Hutchison’s proposed acquisition of Telefónica UK on the theory that going from four to three mobile network operators would harm price competition. Subsequent deals like Orange/MásMóvil in Spain cleared only with structural remedies — spectrum divested to a new entrant to keep the operator count at four.

That orthodoxy cracked in December 2024 when the UK Competition and Markets Authority approved Vodafone–Three at £15 billion with behavioral remedies and a network-investment commitment, the first time a major European regulator waved through a clean 4-to-3 mobile deal. The SFR transaction is the first big test of whether that posture is policy or a one-off. The consortium structure — splitting SFR’s subscribers across three remaining players rather than concentrating them in one — is a deliberate attempt to dampen the concentration metrics regulators look at first.

What it means for capital markets

For Altice’s creditors, the deal converts an illiquid post-restructuring equity stake into a near-term cash distribution. For Drahi personally, it monetizes what is left of his 55% stake; Bloomberg’s follow-up noted he keeps Altice International (Portugal, Israel, the Dominican Republic) as the surviving operating platform. For the buyers, the financing burden is real: Bouygues alone will need roughly €8.5 billion of equity-and-debt funding, almost certainly testing the euro investment-grade market in late 2026 if the definitive documents arrive on schedule.

And for European telecom investors, the message is the one they have been pricing in since the Vodafone–Three approval: scale matters more than operator count, and the Brussels veto over 4-to-3 mergers is no longer absolute. Whether that holds depends on what the Commission says about SFR in 2027.

What to watch next

H2 2026: Definitive transaction agreements signed by the consortium.
2027: European Commission Phase II review almost certain given the 4-to-3 structure.
H2 2027 (targeted close): Remedy package — spectrum divestment, MVNO access, retail price commitments — likely material.
Bouygues funding: Watch euro IG primary market for new SFR-financing supply.

Sources

Disclosure: This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed before publication. It is for informational purposes only and is not investment advice.

Drahi’s €20.4B SFR Sale: France Telecom Goes 4-to-3