Orange S.A. (ORA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholders, welcome to Orange's Combined General Meeting. First of all, I hope that you are staying healthy as well as your loved ones. It is still in the exceptional context of the health crisis and above all, to protect the health and safety of our shareholders, our coworkers and service providers that we could not imagine that once again, this year, we would be able to organize our Annual General Meeting as we usually do. Indeed, given administrative decisions that restrict or prohibit travel or collective gatherings for health reasons and in accordance with legal and regulatory provisions extended in December and March for general meetings this year. The 2020 general meeting is happening in camera without shareholders or other people being allowed to be -- take part physically. A general meeting is a major milestone in the life of your company. It's an opportunity for me and the whole management team to present our achievements and projects. This year, I am delighted to welcome you live from our new head office in Issy-les-Moulineaux that we are going to show you. The general meeting is broadcast on Orange's website, and I know that many of you are following us. In order to have a focus on questions and as authorized by the commerce code, answers to written questions were placed online on the dedicated AGM page on our website. In addition to this legal system for written questions, we've decided to make available a dedicated platform open on 10 May, a page dedicated to the general meeting on our website, orange.com to help you ask your questions. So you can still ask your questions live during the AGM. There will be gathered by themes, and answers will be provided during the Q&A session at the end of the AGM within the time frame allotted for this Q&A session. First of all, I would like to give you some legal information about the organization of this combined general meeting. Pursuant to the law and Article 21 of the articles of association, I shall act as Chair of this AGM happening on first notice. The preliminary notice of meeting of this AGM was published in BALO on February 26 and the notice of meeting was published in BALO on 19 April and in the legal bulletin [indiscernible]. This year, you were asked to vote entirely remotely and votes were closed yesterday at 3:00 p.m. and so I'm able to communicate the quorum, which is 74.26%. The required quorum is obtained, both for the ordinary and for the extraordinary part of the AGM. Pursuant to legal and regulatory provisions, the appointment of tellers was made by your Board of Directors. The 2 shareholders with the largest number of votes are Bpifrance Participations and the French government. However, the French government because of its care for pluralism of representation within our AGM, agreed for the employee share ownership fund Orange Actions, the third largest shareholder after Bpifrance Participations and itself, to act as teller in its instead. The tellers that were appointed are, therefore, Bpifrance Participations represented by Thierry Sommelet and Orange Actions Fund represented by Nadia Zak-Calvet. Good afternoon to the both of you. I shall propose if they so agree to appoint Nicolas Guérin, secretary general as secretary for this AGM. I now bring this meeting to order. Beside me, I have Ramon Fernandez, who is Executive Director for Fund [indiscernible] and Delegate CEO; and Nicolas Guérin, Secretary General and Secretary of the Board of Directors. Other members of the Executive Board are also connected with us remotely, and they can also answer your questions later. I'll also take this opportunity to congratulate once again, all of the directors for their work, in particular for their dedication in the current context as well as for the work of the various committees of the Board of Directors, which vouch for the implementation of the government's rules that we care particularly strongly about. The statutory auditors of Orange, EY and KPMG, represented by Jacques Pierre, Signatory partner of KPMG, will share with us their reports remotely. All of the usual documents are made available to the AGM. Legal documents were sent to all shareholders who requested them. A notice of meeting was sent to all registered shareholders, either digitally or via mail. The convening documents with a brief explanation of the group situation in 2020 as well as the agenda and the text of the resolutions. And more generally, all the legally required documentation for this AGM could be consulted from the legal department and also available online on the dedicated page on our website, orange.com. This AGM will decide on ordinary and extraordinary parts of the agenda on the management's report of the Board of Directors, on the resolution submitted to the vote. The additional report of the Board of Directors on the resolutions presented by the Orange Actions Fund, report from statutory auditors on consolidated and annual accounts and statutory auditor reports on resolutions and regulated third-party agreements. The assembly -- the general meeting is also asked to vote on 35 draft resolutions, put together by the Board of Directors. Two draft resolutions were presented by the Orange Action Fund and they were not approved by your Board. If you agree, I'm not going to read the various reports that were already made available to you in the universal registration document 2020 and the convening documents. To start this meeting and before, amongst other things, Ramon Fernandez gives you more detail about Orange's financial results, I wanted to focus on Orange's strategy. Allow me to start with a word about how your company went through this unprecedented period of health crisis. And then I will explain the achievements and crucial steps that were met in the strategic plan, Engage 2025, and I'll explain the reasons why we can look to the future with confidence. Thanks to the growth prospects in this next world, where your company will have a major role to play. Communication networks gave these last few months, the definitive evidence of their vital dimension. Digital became an indispensable solution to guarantee continuity in the life of the nation to keep connections with our loved ones to carry on working, learning and being entertained. Networks are the backbone of this digital environment. They held fast, and they will still hold fast. After the shock absorbed in the spring of 2020, the load remains high. In April 2021, traffic on our fixed networks in France were still 30% higher than in March 2020 and plus 15% on voice networks. Since the first day of this health crisis, Orange as a responsible operator met its responsibility. Vis-à-vis public authorities by being involved in the development of the French government contact tracing application TousAntiCovid with over 60 million downloads right now. And we did not use any public support mechanisms whilst preserving the purchasing power of our employees vis-à-vis our customers, consumers or corporates. We still offer them excellent quality of service. This effort was recognized by our customers as evidenced by the scores on our customer satisfaction indicator, which grew in 2020 on all market segments. And also vis-à-vis our partners, especially our subcontractors, for which we very quickly adopted very strong initiatives of nearly 10,000 suppliers could have cash payment measures for a cumulative amount of EUR 800 million. We also mobilized our foundations in all the countries where we operate in order to be involved in the solidarity based effort via a dedicated fund of EUR 11 million. These results are the culmination of the team's exceptional engagement. And I would like to express my deepest gratitude to them. Indeed, they were mobilized without counting their hours to guarantee continuity in our business that is essential for public authorities, companies and every single one of us. Here, I'm thinking of the 20,000 network heroes who in every country of the group were at work, in the spring, in the field, in our shops, in our supervision centers and data centers to maintain networks, supervise them and remediate incidents. In France, the 10,000 technicians who carried on -- carrying out technical interventions during the first lockdown, carried out 1 million interventions in just a few weeks. Now our working methods are still completely revolutionized. In all our stores, now preliminary appointments have to be made. And strict sanitary protocols are in place. Our absolute priority is still to protect the health of our employees and customers. To support those on the front line, there are those who are -- have been working remotely for over a year now. Last year, almost 100,000 of us worldwide switched to teleworking in just a few days. Sometimes for jobs where we could not imagine this would be possible. Still now today, teleworking remains the standard, and the team is extremely adaptable. We believe that many of the changes that were dictated by the health crisis are going to last. The changes in working methods is part of that. And that's why we've integrated these parameters in the design of our new head office bridge. It was the last head office that was designed in the previous world, but it is going to be the first one to open in the next world. The guidance in our strategic plan presented in 2019 was bolstered. First of all, Orange's social and environmental responsibility at the heart of Engage 2025 came into its own during the crisis. We are, therefore, indicated in our decision to have made an environmental commitment and the control of our carbon footprint, making that a priority. I'll remind you of our strong ambitions in this respect, reaching carbon neutrality by 2040, 10 years ahead of the Paris Agreement. And as early as 2025, use over 50% of renewable energies and reduce CO2 emissions by 30% compared to 2015. We are also vindicated in our projects for high-speed broadband for everybody, fixed and mobile alike. Indeed, the health crisis accelerated the digital transformation of our society and never before have our customers' needs in terms of connectivity been so high. Last but not least, the relevance of our growth drivers is also consolidated, be it our ambition in Africa and Middle East or new growth territories for corporates, in particular, cybersecurity. Orange was therefore fully mobilized in the last few months. And I think that we weathered the crisis in an exemplary fashion. At the same time, we proved that we were able to execute our strategic plan and many crucial milestones were met in the deployment of our networks and optimization -- in optimization of our infrastructure management in particular. For fixed, very high speed broadband, we can be proud of our technical and commercial results on fiber optics, with over 25 million housing units that can be connected. France is the most connected country in Europe with fiber. We can be proud to share this achievement with all the players in this humongous project. In spite of the health crisis, we were able to deploy more fiber optic connections in 2020 than 2019. Orange was the main agent in this success because we deployed over 2/3 of plugs, so 15.7 million and 14 million of which we paid for ourselves. In the past few years, Orange deployed 3.4 million plugs, and we now offer contracts to almost all of the households that can be connected. So 60% of French households. So we're meeting our customers' needs, and they have a growing appetite for fiber. Now regarding the sales performance, 3 successive records were broken in 2020 in the third -- in the second, third and fourth quarter, during which we had over 390,000 net sales. Last week, we crossed the symbolic mark of 5 million customers on Orange's fiber. At the same time, Orange is still investing EUR 500 million per year in the maintenance of the copper network in France. A constant envelope in spite of the reduction of the number of copper connected customers because of the accelerated transition to fiber. Moreover, we announced in Engage 2025 that we wanted to decommission copper without waiting for requests from the regulator. In order to anticipate on this transition, this year, we carried out the first experiments and the learnings from that were very insightful. Based on strong industrial and marketing know-how, that is now solidly recognized, Orange is now the undisputed leader in fiber optics in Europe, where we have connected over 47 million households. Everywhere, marketing performance confirms the strong appetite of customers for this technology. In 2020, we launched 5G in 5 European countries, including Slovakia last week. Now we are offering 5G offers in 6 countries in Europe. Tomorrow, the challenge will be to build on new users in order to turn this technological revolution into a sales success. In France, and that's the exception, the launch of 5G led to some controversy. The subject to -- political dimension, especially during the latest municipal elections. Everywhere, we chose to focus on dialogue with local authorities and being involved in citizens' debates in order to defend our beliefs on the many opportunities made possible by this technology. This is the best response to the capacity challenge that we are going to face as early as 2020 in major French cities. It will have a positive impact on the competitiveness of companies and on the attractiveness of territories. Lastly, it is a major lever in the energy and the environmental transition. Orange is keeping the deployment base in line with this strategy and timetable, and we're now covering most major French cities. In line with our desire to offer the best connectivity to our customers, we chose to deploy 5G on the 3.5 gigahertz frequency bands, the only ones that can meet the promise of this new technology in terms of quality of service. With over 1,200 sites in France, we are the operator that has deployed the most real 5G to date. And a recent study confirmed that Orange had a clear lead on its competitors in terms of connection quality. This is a precious asset in the current period marked in the last few weeks with the return of strong promotional [ agitation ] on mobile. Regarding users, everywhere, we follow the goal to be privileged partners in a digital transformation of companies that are going to be the first to benefit from this technological revolution. The recent coverage of Le Havre Harbor with 5G is an excellent example. By optimizing our infrastructure management, we are pursuing a twofold goal, which is to both value a strategic asset on mobile and to accelerate the development pace on fixed applications. On mobile and as announced in Engage 2025, we decided to keep the control of our passive infrastructure. We consider that to be a strategic asset that will create value for the company. We have, therefore, announced when we published our results in February that we would launch a European TowerCo, TOTEM. TOTEM is part of an ambitious industrial project. The goal is both to guarantee our independence and to promote lasting economic performance. At first, it will operate a portfolio of premium towers of over 25,000 sites in France and Spain. The growth potential for this new structure is high. On one hand, TOTEM will benefit from significant opportunities to grow its hosting business on its whole portfolio. On the other hand, we also have a key asset to consolidate this market on the European level. TOTEM will be managed by an independent managerial team, the aim of which will be to bring this TowerCo to the rank of leader on the European market of telecommunication towers, which is a growing market. A Chief Executive Officer has already been identified to lead this structure. On fixed very high speed broadband. Since the beginning of the year, we have made 2 great operations from FiberCos, 1 in France and 1 in Poland. This will help us accelerate the deployment of fiber whilst meeting our financial targets. In France, in January, we announced the launch of Orange Concessions, in order to help us free up the necessary headroom to accelerate the deployment of fiber in rural areas. For that, we chose a consortium of long-term French investors, the leading ones to help us along in this project. This transaction valued Orange concessions at over EUR 2.5 billion or roughly EUR 600 per plug. This proves to the market how valuable this strategic asset is and also how relevant our choices is -- are, sorry. And we also announced in April, a new FiberCo in Poland to help us deploy 2.4 million fiber plugs in the country, 1.7 million of which in the next 5 years. Now let's look to the future. We can look to the future confidently, thanks to our growth trajectories based on the digital transformation of companies and the diversification of our activities. 75% of companies have stated that the crisis was like a shock, and it's going to accelerate their digital transition. Artificial intelligence, big data, cloud hosting of data. Yet, Orange has a fundamental asset to support its customers in their more than ever vital digitalization. This asset is trust. Faced with the rise of players from the U.S. and China, Orange is fully contributing to the emergence of the European ecosystem, a third way, especially in the field of the cloud. We are operating, integrating and orchestrating a multitude of services on trusted infrastructure. Regulatory changes that have happened since 2020 in terms of European citizens, data protection, or the industrial accidents that affected other players in this sector remind us that this value of trust is an essential prerequisite if we want to build solid and robust industrial European projects. The acceleration of the company's digital transformation also leads to the rise of new threats. Chief amongst which cyberattacks. They multiplied -- they grew fourfold between 2019 and 2020 and all economic agents, whatever their size of business can be targeted. By investing as early as 2014 in cybersecurity, Orange was positioned very early on in this growing market, and it now has a unique position if you compare it to other telco operators. The excellent results of Orange CyberDefense, with a turnover that grew by 9% in 2020, prove that Orange has an essential asset to support its customers, and we are confident about our ability to meet our goals to reach EUR 1 billion in turnover by 2023. We're also looking at all options in order to leverage the full potential of this business in order to become more agile and responsive in a market that is still very competitive. Engage 2025 sets a specific ambition in Africa, Middle East, with very good results to confirm the driving role of that in the company's growth. We shall continue to strengthen our position there in order to become the leading operator in 2025, especially thanks to our multi-service strategy. Our first development area is to help -- to support the quick transformation of users by providing our customers with the best connectivity on fixed and mobile. Orange already has 30 million 4G customers on the continent -- the African continent or 40% more than in 2019. In order to support our development and be involved in the emergence of an efficient -- of an African digital ecosystem, we are fully involved in various infrastructure projects. In July, we launched Djoliba, the first Pan-African network in West Africa, Orange imposed itself as a central player in international connectivity in Africa and cleared a new step in its development of the continent. The second growth avenue is to strengthen our multi-service strategy, embodied by the success of Orange Money. This money transfer and payment service now has over 50 million customers. And the aim is to double the revenues of this business by 2025 in order to reach EUR 1 billion in turnover. In 2020, we expanded our geographical presence with this service by launching Orange Money in Morocco and Jordan. By the way, with the launch of Orange Bank, Africa and Côte d'Ivoire in July, we are fleshing out our value proposition by allowing the customers to subscribe loans or to save online. In 6 months, over 0.5 million customers joined us, which illustrates a strong growth potential ahead of us. Banking is one of the pillars for the group's diversification. This is only the beginning of that story, but the target is now to accelerate its development. We launched Orange Bank in 2017 in France, with the goal to make the access to innovation and digital banking more popular with the synergies to be invented between the banking sector and the telco business. This first step was followed by the launch of Orange Bank in Spain in 2019. And then Côte d'Ivoire in the spring of 2020. Of course, we faced some difficulties in the first few years as is almost always the case with such entrepreneurial adventures and endeavors. However, with over 1 million customers in Europe, Orange Bank was able to carve its own niche on the neo-bank market. After a launch, very much focused on volumes in order to maximize customer recruitment. We gradually refocused our strategy towards value and the quest for synergies with telcos. The first results of this pivot are encouraging, and over 80% new customers recruited now are paying customers. Moreover, future developments will be based in the future on business specialization, thanks to mergers or partnerships with specialized players. Last year, the establishment of our corporate purpose in the articles of association was approved by 99.98% of voters. This purpose was presented after a long co design project. Indeed, it seems crucial for it to be shared collectively by the whole team. Allow me to remind you here that Orange is the trusted player, which gives every man and woman, the keys to a responsible digital world. Our raison d'etre reflects the strong markers, which are the DNA of the Orange group. The embodiment of an alternative path compared to the digital giants based on trust. The universal reach of our action is for everybody. And then we are defending a determinably optimistic approach to digital without any naivete. We are providing the keys to our customers, and the rest is their own. We are now in the next phase. The materialization of this purpose. A purpose committee is going to be created with Orange employees but also external players. It's aim is going to be -- to bring positive momentum in the implementation of our purpose and in order to make sure that it's implemented in operational terms. 2020 was, therefore, an exceptional year in every respect. Orange went through this crisis in an exemplary manner, whilst accelerating the -- the execution of the roadmap outlined in Engage 2025. I will now hand over to Ramon Fernandez, who is going to present the financial results.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholders, I have the pleasure of providing you with the details of the results of your group for 2020 in the context of the crisis of COVID, then I will tell you about the achievement the first quarter of 2021, before I tell you about the dividend. 2020 has been an extraordinary year marked by a crisis of unprecedented magnitude. Despite that, Orange has shown its ability to adapt to keep offering its customers the best services while continuing its transformation and the execution of its strategic plan Engage 2025. With revenue slightly up 0.3% and EBITDAaL down by only 1%, we've reached the financial objectives of the year, which we had revised in July to take into account the effects of the crisis. Our organic cash flow reaches EUR 2.5 billion. It is growing, and we have confirmed our objective to increase it at least EUR 3.5 billion in 2023 as we had committed in the context of our strategic plan, our very good performance was -- commercial performance is to be commended, 11 million conversion customers, more than 9 million fiber customers out of 47 connectable households. Our very high speed broadband customer basis is up 24%. Thanks to Poland and France, notably. Orange remains the undisputed #1 fiber operator in Europe. On the mobile market, our 5G offers are now available in 5 countries with strong demand for 5G compatible smartphones. Finally, we were ranked by our set the best mobile network in France for the tenth year in a row. In Africa and the Middle East, we've reached close to EUR 2 billion in EBITDAaL, up 10% in 2020 and even 18% over 2 years. Orange Money has broken for the first time, the EUR 500 million revenue mark for the first time. Orange Bank Africa is a success since it supports more than 350,000 customers just 5 months after its launch in Côte d'Ivoire. Finally, during this difficult period, we have seen increase in our NPS. We're #1 in France. On the European 5 countries, out of 6 are ranked first. The resilience of our networks and the success of our strategy centered on customer experience finds here a very good recognition.. Finally, another highlight for 2020 following the favorable decision of the French Conseil d'Etat last November regarding an all tax dispute, the Orange group has recovered EUR 2.2 billion. We have presented to the Board of Directors on December 2, the plan for the use of these points guided by a sense of balance for the benefit of the development of the company, its employees and its shareholders with the reinforced societal commitment. For 2020, I will speak directly to our financial results then I will tell you more about sales performance in the context of our results for Q1 2021. Group revenue amounts to EUR 42.3 billion in 2020, up 0.3%. This increase is, first and foremost, the result of continued very strong momentum in Africa and Middle East, plus 5.2%, driven by all growth engine, data with 4G, Orange Money, data fixed high-speed broadband and B2B. France grows by 1.6%, thanks to the success of convergence and also very largely to the growth in revenues from fiber, which supply both services to operator via exceptional co-funding and the B2C market. The OBS B2B activities impacted by the crisis post revenue down 1.4% over the year, but improved trend in Q4, thanks to a strong pickup in IT and SI. Finally, Europe is down by 3.5%, mainly due to Spain, where we have put in place an action plan with the new management to correct the situation. In terms of profitability, EBITDAaL reaches EUR 12.7 billion, down 1% because of the drop in roaming, EUR 292 million and by the cost directly related to the crisis, minus EUR 253 million. Our enterprise activities have been especially impacted by the crisis. 2/3 of the 15% drop in EBITDAaL. In Spain, improving EBITDAaL is our priority, following a 13% fall in 2020. Those effects have been offset by the remarkable performance of Africa and in the Middle East, where EBITDAaL grew by 10% over the year and also by the good results of other European countries, plus 2.3%, and France's resilience with plus 0.2%. The company is also mobilized to implement operational efficiency and cost control programs essential to carry out our transformation and provide us with the leeway we need to seize growth opportunities. The objective of our scale up program is to generate EUR 1 billion in net savings by 2023. The 2/3 of which are located in France, leveraging several initiatives in various fields, such as real estate, automation of some processes or the evolution of our skills and employment, a subject that will be treated with the greatest attention. Besides, to support our performance and offer the best quality of network and service, we have continued to improve our future with significant investments, EUR 7.1 billion. The decrease of our eCapex indicator by 1.7% comes mainly from significant co financing of our fiber network in France. The common reduction of our growth investment effort, while we've continued to invest massively in our fixed and mobile high-speed broadband networks. Thus, despite COVID, the group has deployed more optical fiber in 2020 than the previous year with 9 million additional households connected versus 7.2 million the year before. End of 2020, Orange had 47.2 million households that could be connected to the fiber, up 23.4% over 1 year. End of 2020, nearly 100% of mobile sites in France offer 4G coverage, and we are preparing for 5G. To conclude on investments, a word about the agreements we've signed in Romania for the acquisition of a 54% block within the fixed operator, Telekom Romania, one of the main fixed operators in Romania. This acquisition will allow us to accelerate our convergent operator strategy in this country. As a reminder, during the December Investor Day, we had decided to move from operating cash flow to organic cash flow closer to actual cash generation. This indicator is used to compute formulas for internal compensation plans. Organic cash flow corresponds to the amount of available cash for acquisitions, dividend, licenses, potential litigation and also net debt reduction. In 2020, organic cash flow reached EUR 2.5 billion, in line with our objective to reach more than EUR 2.3 billion, thus resuming with growth with an increase of EUR 100 million versus 2020 -- 2019. The EUR 2.2 billion received in December 2020 in the context of the above-mentioned tax dispute add to these EUR 2.5 billion. This performance has led to a consolidated net income of EUR 5.1 billion, up 57%, i.e., EUR 1.8 billion. And 2020 net debt reached EUR 23.5 billion. Our net debt-to-EBITDAaL ratio stands at 1.83, with an average majority of Orange S.A. bonds of 8.6 years and an average cost of gross debt of 3.18%. Our liquidity position is sound with EUR 17.2 billion end of 2020, of which EUR 11.1 billion in cash. All in all, our balance sheet structure is, therefore, sound. This is a key element to help us get through the crisis and prepare for the future. Let's now move to our Q1 performance for 2021, which reminds us of the fact that a year ago, we were publishing our first results, partially affected by COVID. Despite this continuum of pandemic, Orange once again has demonstrated this quarter its resilience, supported by the complementarity of our activities and our presence on several markets and countries our ability to adapt, which was illustrated by very good performance -- commercial performances. Thanks to that, we now have end of March, more than 11.1 million conversion customers and nearly 10 million fiber customers out of 49 million connectable households. We've recorded strong net fiber sales, especially thanks to fiber in France, we have reached the best high-speed broadband performance over a single quarter since 2016. On mobile, we now serve, 85 million 4G customers, i.e., plus 21% over a year, in particular, due to our strong momentum in Africa and in the Middle East. First quarter, 5G offers were available in 5 countries. We were covering 239 municipalities in France. Orange Bank's customer base now has 1.5 million customers in Europe, nearly 300,000 B2B newly integrated in the scope with the integration of any time and the pro SME insurance customer, Orange Bank Africa already has more than 500,000 customers in Africa. As Stephane Richard indicated, this first quarter 2021 has also marked an important step in the implementation of our infrastructure strategy, one of our pillars of our strategy. The network is our core business. We're, therefore, seeking the best conditions to be able to develop it, manage it in an optimal manner and make the most of it while retaining control over our strategic assets. That is the very point of the project announced in December 2019, which are now being realized with the creation of Orange Concessions and creation of FiberCo. And also on the mobile side, the definition of our European TowerCo TOTEM that will be operational in '21 under the management of [Nicolas Foi]. Those projects clearly underline the value of our network assets which have proved so crucial in the current context of a pandemic. By creating those independent structures, we start -- reinforce our leadership, we promote our growth and help the creation of sustainable value. Regarding our financial performance now, this quarter was fully impacted by COVID, while Q1 2020 only experienced 2 weeks of crisis. Nevertheless, we managed to maintain revenue growth at plus 0.5% to reach EUR 10.3 billion despite the decline, which is continuing in Spain, minus 7.4%. Excellent performance of EMEA at plus 7.1%. The solidity of other European countries growing by 2.2% outside of Spain and return to growth of the B2B segment at plus 0.4%. France has shown resilience at minus 0.2%, whereas 1/3 of shops have been closed since the end of January. The group has also stabilized its EBITDAaL at minus 0.3% despite the drop in roaming with 42 million this quarter. In line with our end of the year objectives, eCapex are up 12.4% to reach EUR 1.8 billion end of March. This increase is mainly linked to lower asset disposal as well as to an acceleration of investments after the slow down due to COVID in the first quarter of 2020 in France and in the Middle East and Africa. Before moving to our objective for 2021, I would like to say a few words about the exceptional year, we have just spent by evoking the main effects of the health crisis of our activities. First of all, the performances we've just commented reflect the remarkable resilience of Orange in times of crisis made possible by the strong mobilization of our teams, our ability to react quickly and make sure our networks continue working whereas there is an explosion in traffic. The crisis has confirmed the priorities of our strategic plan. It has shown how connectivity is crucial for us that has validated our massive investments in networks. This was reflected both by record net sales and also by significant wholesale revenue in France. During the periods of lock down, Orange's mobilization also manifested itself through a transfer of commercial activity from storage to digital channels and customer service and in all of our technical activities to ensure network maintenance. The COVID crisis has not been without impact on our financial results. The increase in the trade receivable provisions, the health crisis related cost and the drop in roaming, all this has had an impact of EUR 545 million on our EBITDAaL. This is why we had to revise downwards end of July, our 2020 targets. Moving our EBITDAaL target from a positive stable to about minus 1%. As indicated, we nevertheless succeeded in maintaining and finally, exceeding our objective of organic cash flow generation. Significantly, finally, we recorded a peak in co-financing, FiberCo financing, increasing revenue as EBITDAaL and reducing eCapex. These co financing illustrate our ability to monetize our fiber investments made in recent years and have helped us partly offset the negative effects of the crisis. Let's move to our goals for 2021. Despite a continuing pandemic context, we confirm the 2021 objectives announced in February include the effect of the tax repayment. First, we expect a negative stable EBITDAaL, integrating an ambitious employee shareholding plan and new CSR projects funded, thanks to the tax reimbursement. Second, the level of eCapex will be between EUR 7.6 billion and EUR 7.7 billion, in line with our previous guidance of EUR 14.7 billion to EUR 14.8 billion cumulative for '20 and '21. Thirdly, the 2021 organic cash flow will be greater by EUR 2.2 billion, and our net debt-to-EBITDAaL ratio will remain unchanged around 2 in the medium term. If you look at our underlying performance, excluding the effect of the tax repayment, you see on the left of the table that EBITDAaL would be up about 1%, and the organic cash flow would be above EUR 2.6 billion. A few words to conclude on the remuneration of shareholders. We propose to the shareholders to rule on the distribution of the 2020 dividend of EUR 0.70 per share plus EUR 0.20 linked to the favorable decision of the Council of State regarding the dispute due to an interim dividend of $0.40 paid on December 9. The balance of the dividend proposed through the AGM amounts to EUR 0.50 per share and will be paid in cash on June 17, 2021. The ex-date being set for June 15, 2021. For fiscal year 2021, the payment of a dividend of EUR 0.70 per share will be proposed to the General Meeting of Shareholders in 2022, a down payment of EUR 0.30 per share will be paid in December 2021. Thank you for your attention. I now hand the floor over to our auditors.

It is my pleasure to present on behalf of college of statutory auditors EY and KPMG, the reports that we have drafted for you. These includes the reports on annual consolidated accounts of the fiscal year, the special report on regulated agreements and the reports on capital transactions. Therefore, as part of our audit of annual and consolidated accounts, we have conducted in-depth control procedures. Consistent notably in assessing the quality of the internal control and risk management system. Checking the integrity of quantitative information and the compliance of the information presented in the notes. As the report points out, we have been paying particular attention to some key areas of audit that relate to the most sensitive areas of financial reporting because of the complexity of the transactions and processes in the information systems that they cover or because they include elements of estimation or judgment. Therefore, as part of our audit on the annual accounts of the Orange S.A. company, we have notably addressed the following key audit matters. On the one hand, the revenue recognition for telecommunication activities. On the other hand, the evaluation of the base business and participatory shares and finally, the valuation of provisions for competition and regulatory disputes. Following our audit, we certify that the annual financial statements given the French accounting rules and principles give a true and fair view of the results of the operations for the year ended, the financial position of the company and the assets and liabilities of the company. Furthermore, we do not have any information, observations on the due diligence with regard to the information given in the management board of the Board of Directors, the report on corporate governance and the other documents on the financial position and annual accounts sent to shareholders. As part of our audit on the consolidated financial statements of the Orange Group, we have conducted an audit on the most significant subsidiary contributions and net consolidation. In particular, we've addressed the following key audit items: Those included in our report on the annual accounts regarding revenues and provisions for litigation, the evaluation of goodwill for intangible and tangible assets and finally, the recognition of deferred tax assets associated with tax loss carry-forwards. At the end of our audit, we certify that the 2020 consolidated financial statements are in light of the IFRS guidelines, true and fair -- and give a true and fair view of the results of the operations of the past financial year as well as the financial situation and assets of the group. Without calling into question our opinion, however, we'd like to draw your attention to the change of method required by regulations following a decision by the international accounting regulator on the duration of these agreements, a decision published at the end of 2019 and applied by your group in 2020 accounts with retroactive effect from 1st January 2019. With respect to regulated agreements, we have been informed of the continuation in fiscal year 2020 of the following 2 agreements already approved by your general meeting. On the one hand, the agreement extending to corporate offices, the benefits of the group's policies covering health care costs and death, incapacity and disability. And on the other hand, the agreement concluded for the purposes of the Expo Dubai 2020 with Compagnie française des expositions, a company wholly-owned by the French state, which remained in force because of the postponement of the event. So our work on the capital transactions referred to in Resolutions 19 to 30, 31, 32, and 34, which relate to delegation of powers or powers and the authorization to grant free shares, do not call for any particular comments on our part. We shall draft supplementary reports where appropriate when these delegations are actually used. As regards Resolution A proposed by the Orange Actions employee mutual fund, we have no comments to make on the information given in the report of the Board of Directors. With respect to our other reports, we have issued, a report on the consolidated statement of nonfinancial performance, as well as another report that is a reasonable assurance on the selection of nonfinancial information submitted by your company. In the course of our work, we did not find any significant anomalies with respect to the compliance of this declaration, with regulatory provisions and the compliance of the non-financial information submitted with the applicable framework. Finally, we've issued a certificate on the total amount of remuneration paid to the [best lead persons. ] And that does not call for any observation from us. Ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholders, this is a summary of our various reports on the fiscal year 2020. Thank you for your attention.

Dear shareholders, before we answer your many questions with the Executive Board, I would like to show you a video with news about your company. [Presentation]

Yes. Now we are going to move to the questions-and-answer session. I'm immediately reading the first question. The Africa, Middle East area is still enjoying strong growth. What are the other growth engines in the group?

Well upon. I'll try to answer this question. First of all, there are these growth drivers as highlighted in this question. In Africa and the Middle East, we saw the contribution that this area made year after year. I think there is still great growth potential ahead of us in this area via the development of our services, what I was discussing earlier, but also via growth operations, including inorganic growth operations that would help us extend our geographical scope in Africa, Middle East. Second main growth driver, infrastructure. I think that there is a very strong message to remind everybody of. In the telco industry, a lot of players, thoughts about their infrastructure, especially their mobile infrastructure was not strategic so they disposed of it very often because they were facing balance sheet problems because debt was too high. We've been managing this group well. So we have this robust balance sheet. And so we are able, quite the contrary, to turn this infrastructure business, the ownership, management and optimization of infrastructure into a great long-term business and growth business for the group. So clearly, for me, the business of infrastructure is a growth driver in both fixed and mobile. The third driver, everything that has to do with the digital transformation of companies. It was also highlighted earlier. Businesses related to the cloud, especially trusted cloud, that Orange has high ambitions about the business of cybersecurity. You saw the growth rates for all of these businesses, we're expecting double-digit growth. And that is undisputedly a great growth driver to the Orange Group, and these branches will be good drivers. And we can also be happy about the position that we've acquired. We are one of the few telcos in the world with that position in OBS with the cloud or cybersecurity. And in the consumer business, we have a lot of growth drivers in our core business first. Fiber optics is a growth driver. Look at the growth rates that we can achieve. We've talked about France and Europe, but you could also name Africa, where we've also got strong ambitions regarding the rollout of fiber. And then there's diversification in services, especially around digital banking and all the associated services. So Orange, as you can see, is also a great growth story, forthcoming growth story with decisions and bets that were made, but great prospects for the future. We are now going to take the second question. That I'm going to read, whereas the French index is reaching new highs. And in spite of the group's financial solidity, how is it that the Orange share price is not taking off despite analyst recommendations in the last few years? A major question, and I'll ask Ramon Fernandez to explain that.

Thank you, Mr. CEO. Well, the current share price performance between EUR 10 and EUR 11 is indeed lower than our ambitions, but it should also be placed back in this context. There are 2 very different moments in the current period where the telco sector has been having a difficult time in the stock market. In 2007, 2008, after the arrival of the fourth operator, Orange greatly overperformed the European telco sector. This overperformance was almost 100 percentage points over 5 years, and the share was seen -- the stock was seen as one of the best stocks in the sector. And then the second phase in the situation was reversed from early 2019 onwards with underperformance of slightly less than 25 points. And since the beginning of 2021, our underperformance is around 6 points. Because we increased by about 10%, whereas the telco business in Europe grew by 16%. So why were there these 2 phases? Why this reversal? I think that there were 3 main series of reasons. We've been feeling pressure in our 2 main markets, France and Spain. And you need to see that combined together, these 2 countries account for 55% of the revenues and 70% of the group's EBITDAaL, and the absence of consolidation prospects on the French market, the sudden reversal of the Spanish market are so many reasons why we had this negative performance. Although our growth drivers that Stephane Richard talked about still need to kick in. That's why we made the strategic choice to invest massively in fiber. A choice that very few operators have made and now changing their opinion. We were right to make this choice into the future, but this is heavy investment choice that has an impact on our cash flow and the regulatory context, sometimes raises doubts about our ability to monetize this investment in the long term. And third factor, the health crisis had a significant weight for Orange, especially because of the major impacts of the end of roaming because we are recipient countries, in France and Spain and the decisions we've made in the spring of 2020 with our dividend decision, given difficult context, these decisions were poorly understood by investors and the return into a normalized dividend policy that was announced today, did not reverse these questions. However, analysts that track Orange still massively recommends to buy the stock, given the commitments we've made. So I think that now we need to in our ability to meet our commitments to deliver on the strategic plan and the transformation with the infrastructure project, the acceleration of growth drivers, the deployment of our operational efficiency plan and cost containment plan and our ability to reach our target for organic cash flow in 2023. And no doubt, if we do that, the share price will reap all the benefits.

Thank you, Ramon, for this comprehensive answer. Next question. The Orange brand is a leader. How can you build on this asset to seek out more growth? Well quite naturally, I'll ask Béatrice Mandine, who is in charge of the brand and the corporate purpose to answer that.

Good afternoon, Mr. CEO, thank you for reminding us the shareholder that the Orange brand is a leader. We are very happy and, of course, very proud to see how powerful it is. It's -- we're not taking that for granted. It has to be worked on for the long term. And the Orange brand is an asset that we take care of continually. At Orange, we consider that the brand should be here to serve growth. And so it's a lever for the group strategy. That's true when the company needs to show resilience during the health crisis that we're going through, in particular. And I'd like to remind you that the valuation of the Orange brand remained stable in 2020, between EUR 16 billion and EUR 20 billion, according to surveys. And we're making inroads ranking after ranking because the latest publication of Brand Finance, qualifies us as the highest valued French brand in 2021. The brand is also an interesting asset when the company is growing to new growth territories, this brand supports our development in new geographies. Remember the recent rebranding in Belgium or Morocco or Egypt and also in Africa, Sierra Leone, Burkina Faso, to name but a few. And it's also important when you're diversifying with new business. I'll remind you of the acquisition and rebranding of SecureLink and SecureData, which were merged under the Orange CyberDefense banner in 2020. And also, of course, the deployment of Orange Bank in France, Spain and more recently, Côte d'Ivoire with Orange Bank Africa. And last but not least, this brand is also important when the company is taking a stand, especially with the new strategic plan and also its corporate purpose, which, as you recall, is now enshrined in the articles of association since the latest AGM. This brand also embodies this company's move towards more digital equality and for the environment inside and outside the company. As you can see, the brand -- well, communication are too often seen as expenditures. Well at Orange, we consider that these are investments to serve our growth strategy.

Thank you, Béatrice. The next question, to carry on boosting Orange CyberDefense's growth, what strategy would you like to implement? Will that go through acquisitions? Quite naturally, I'll ask Hugues Foulon, who is the CEO of Orange CyberDefense to shed more lights with answers. Over to you Hugues.

Thank you, Mr. CEO. Thank you, Stéphane. As you recall, in your introductory comments, Orange CyberDefense is a quality asset, the size of which tripled in the 3 years between 2017 and '20, which is quite remarkable. And now OCD is clearly the cybersecurity leader in France, and it's fully in line and part of the group strategy, which is to be a trusted operator. So to accelerate development, there are 2 ways, we are standing on 2 legs, as we have been since the beginning of the project. First of all, organic growth. How can we accelerate organic growth for OCD to grow faster than the market, and we are making considerable efforts to recruit the talent that will help us fuel this growth and grow the OCD business. And there's also the innovation parts and connections with the Orange operator in order to come up with differentiating innovative solutions compared to the European and global competition. Organic growth on the one hand, and the second aspect, which is already there, which is inorganic growth. The cybersecurity market as the -- like the IT market, in general, is very fragmented. The market structure is very different from the telco business. OCD is the leader in France with 8% market share. So you can see the size of the competition. So to accelerate, to consolidate the market or to make inroads into new geographies, as we did with SecureLink, we need to make targeted acquisitions that will allow us to go faster or go to territories where we are not represented or little represented. That's the growth strategy that is our road map for the development of cybersecurity at Orange.

Thank you, Hugues. Next question, the EMEA area had exceptional growth. What is the contribution to the group? And what are the main areas of development in Africa? So I'll turn to Alioune, who's the CEO of EMEA. You have the floor, Alioune. You're muted. Okay. So he's going to fix -- sorry. We can hear you.

Sorry. Thank you, Mr. CEO. Dear shareholders, good afternoon. The Orange Group chose to become established in Africa and the Middle East over 20 years ago. We're now in 18 countries, 16 of which are consolidated. It's a long-term choice because by 2050, according to IMF forecast, every fourth human will be in Africa and the GDP of the company be higher than that of the EU. And in the last 10 years, in spite of the context marked by multiform crisis on the continent, our business grew by 4% on an average basis, despite the crisis. The strong fundamentals of the continent, population growth, young people's appetite for digital as well as the dispersion and the balance of our portfolio helped us be resilient and we've been accelerated. Since 2019, with 6.2% growth in 2019, over 5% in 2020 and 7% in Q1 2021. As Stéphane Richard said, we want to be the preferred multi-service operator for Africans. And bolster our leadership with 3 main levers explained in Engage 2025. The first is to become stronger as a connectivity provider by becoming a leader in terms of mobile internet in all the countries where we operate. And also by focusing on the development of fixed high -- ultra high-speed broadband in this area. The second growth pillar is to develop mobile financial services businesses with more customers and also with an enriched offer with micro credits in particular. Third pillar, design new businesses around connectivity to meet the massive needs on the continent in the next few years. Here, I'm thinking about energy with very difficult access, education, and access to health care services as well. Our operating model transformation that started years ago helped us grow our EBITDAaL about twice as fast as our revenues. And so we cleared some headroom to finance our CapEx and also be in a situation to correctly remunerate our shareholders. And of course, external growth might also be one of those pillars. And the creation of the EMEA holding company in 2017 provided us with a tool that will give us possibilities to support Orange's growth in Africa, whilst optimizing value creation for our shareholders. Thank you, Mr. CEO. Thank you, Dear shareholders.

Thank you, Alioune. The next question, you're saying that Orange does not want to dispose of Orange Bank. Indeed, what is your strategy to ensure lasting growth? Will the banking offer be extended to professionals? Will you go to war, and say full and comprehensive banking service with life insurance, et cetera? Of course, I'm going to give the floor to Paul de Leusse, who is the General Manager for all of our mobile financial services. Paul?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good afternoon to all. Indeed, we would like have a lasting growth that will create value for Orange Bank, 1.5 million customers in France and Spain after 3 years. Our strategy is not to build one more neo baggage to build the Orange neo bank, which means that we're developing offers that are fully part and parcel of the banking, the financial of mobile terminal, the insurance of mobile, the cash back on Orange invoices. And also, it is our banking pack dedicated to family. Accessible to children as of 10, like the open pack in telecom. It also means a distribution of Orange that is doing incredible work in their shops to distribute the Orange Bank offer. This telco bank strategy has 4 dimensions: first is value, the strategy we started 2 years ago, which is bearing fruit because as was said, we went from 15% of customers who take out a pay offer to 57% a year ago than 89% this year, which means that, yes, now, our customers take paying value in Orange Bank. We're going to continue with this development. That was a point of your question, by enlarging our offer to other value products, credit, savings, insurance, which we're developing alone or in partnership. First, access. Secondly, independent customers and enterprise, which we're going to develop in anytime a fintech acquired by Orange Bank at the beginning of the year, which already has 100,000 clients and which has an NPS above 60, which is remarkable. Third, access. Our European development, we would like to develop throughout in all European countries after the launch in Spain, which was a success years ago, we already have more than 100,000 customers in Spain. Full direction, efficiency by optimizing our processes in France and in Spain. This is how our cost of treatment per account was reduced by 25% in 2 years. Now we can serve an increasing number of customers at a lower cost. So dear shareholders and President, those are the 4 elements of our telco bank.

Thank you very much, Paul. Next question. 5G represents an important investment in France for the group. What are your revenue objectives in the medium and long term, given the rates comparable to those of 4G? To what extent is 5G driver -- a growth driver? Fabienne Dulac, in charge of our operations in France is going to tell her about our vision and answer the question. Fabienne?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholders, good afternoon. Each new generation of mobile network meets 1 objective, which is the development of uses and the digital revolution we're going through, and we've been going through for a number of years. 5G is going to be a new basis for new services in the decades to come. It is a foundation that is also going to carry new possibilities in the B2B market, but -- B2C market, but mainly in the B2B market, there are 2 elements. First, it is, of course, because 5G is going to allow us to face the development of users and the increase in traffic we're seeing on our networks, our mobile networks, in particular, we have increases of 40% to 50% of users every year. So this is going to allow us to offer an optimal quality of service and maximal quality of serve without any risk of saturating our networks and having degraded customer experience. 5G is also an asset in the area of B2B and competitiveness. This new network is going to allow us to develop adhoc services, adhoc solutions, applications that are specific to corporations, the B2B market, to support transformation of this sector. The transformation of corporations, be it in the industrial area, on the health care area, the area of tourism, smart cities, services to citizens. Everywhere, we see that we have a potential for new apps and services with data and artificial intelligence, we're going to be able to offer new services that will be sources of -- new sources of revenue. In the context of 5G, Orange has made a very specific choice. As you read, we chose to launch a useful and responsible 5G. We have focused on the deployment of 5G, mainly in cities where we need more capacities to meet those uses and customer experience. We have also decided to go for a [ recent ] deployment at the right pace that takes into account the environmental footprint. For the time -- first time, we have a mobile norm that is designed -- a standard that will optimize energy consumption. That is why we'll be more responsible. In this launch that we call useful and responsible, we've also decided to respect societal dialogue that was necessary, the debate that took place within local authorities. So the deployment, of course, of this network is going to represent important investments. Of course, not as important as those we have had for fiber mentioned by Stéphane. We will have a reasonable investment vis-à-vis what we've had in the last few years. This deployment is going to be taking place in much more competitive context than the one we had for 4G. All actors now want to go and get value. We see that 3 of the main actors on the market have launched offers with the price differential between 4G and 5G. All of those elements give us trust about the potential, the market dynamics, the ability we will have to really transform 5G into a real growth driver for Orange in the years to come. This is what I wanted to tell you about this question.

Thank you, Fabienne. Thank you very much. Next question. How about digital technologies and artificial intelligence? How can they be a source of advancement while being responsible at the same time? That is a major question, and I'm going to maybe ask our CTO or Chief Technology Officer, who is in charge of innovation in the group, Michael Trabbia, for him to tell us about his vision about this important subject. Michael?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Stéphane. Good afternoon to all. Indeed, we see it every way. Digital is transforming our lives, the markets, the behaviors. And the first thing we want to do is better -- have a better understanding of how this transformation is going to take place. That why we're contributing to think tanks like the Digital Society Forum. We take part in the responsible digital study, the OMDIA study we've just published that can shed some light on the impacts of 5G on the environment and employment. Our vision is consistent with our raison d'etre mentioned by Stéphane is to build a digital world that will have a positive impact, both for individuals on the personal level that's why we have services that will simplify and enriches lives, but also that will have a positive impact for the community. In that context, our approach is an end-to-end approach that goes from research and innovation down to our offers through our governance. So our first ambition in the area of CSR is digital inclusion to allow everybody to access digital and to have use keys, which is recalled in our deck. We do that through the deployment of our networks to offer quality coverage in all countries through affordable smartphones like Sanza in Africa or affordable offers like [ Good Boost ]. Through training to digital, very important, we have the Orange digital centers, the fab labs, with innovative solutions like the bots we have developed in Senegal in Wolof. Second, ambition and environmental ambition. Stéphane Richard did talk about it with our object to be net zero carbon in 2040. We want to reduce CO2 for networks and data center, thanks to the use of more performance technologies, the efficiency of 5G, the increase in green energy we use. Then the developing of reuse and recycling of mobile terminals and boxes. But the most impacting subject is the development of what we call solutions for green that will allow us to reduce CO2 emissions from other sectors like transportation industry, building -- representing 96% of CO2 emissions. Our third ambition is to implement a responsible and ethical artificial intelligence to be useful to all and avoid biases. In that context, we have made strong commitments with the creation of an ethical council of data in AI, chaired by Stéphane Richard to make sure that we do implement those practices of unethical use of data and artificial intelligence. This council has 11 independent outside personalities with the diversity of expertise. Then we want to work on responsible and ethical AI. We have a research program, AI Responsible, in 2019 that is working on the ethical evaluation of use cases, the development of responsible AI, management of AI biases. And we support several uses to promote responsible AI, artificial intelligence, with an international charter for an inclusive AI with Arborus. We have, by the way, received the label GEEIS-AI by Bureau Veritas, thanks to what we do to promote diversity and avoid the risk of discrimination AI. So we are convinced that digital technologies must integrate the dimension of responsibility. Orange as a trusted operator must position itself in this area of responsibility.

Thank you. Thank you very much, Michael. Next question. How is it that the health crisis has changed the group and the way it is working? I'd like to give the floor to Gervais Pellissier, who is our General Director in charge of Transformation and Human Resources.

Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would say that, first and foremost, the crisis is not totally over even though things are improving. There's still a number of countries in the group, where the health crisis is still a big problem. I think that it's important to know and to say that less then 10,000 people in the group have said that they have had the COVID throughout the world. And today, unfortunately, in the group, we have about 20 employees who died of COVID. I think we have to have to really think of them and their families, to think of those who were affected by this crisis. Because this crisis is human challenge. It is a crisis that, contrary to previous crisis, like the financial crisis, this crisis has impacted all of us in our personal behaviors as employers, as managers, as corporate decision-makers. The first thing we can see is that we were able, and I think that you have seen that, to ensure business continuity for essential services, as Stéphane Richard -- a number of essential services were maintained. We've organized very quickly the switch of 2/3 of our employees who started working from home. Orange is, in fact, that brings together physical and virtual infrastructure, we were able to make a lot of our work virtual, more than 100,000 people in the world, 60,000 in France started working from home last year. And the -- some of them are still working from home. In this crisis, we've also paid specific attention to the most fragile people. In particular, when the rules allowed, we have allowed people to come back to the work site 1 day a week. We have 60 occupational doctors. We have social workers, psychologists. And a lot of the local HR managers who are making sure that in France and outside of France, we can make sure that as much as possible, the fact of being away from work is not going to make employee more fragile. There's also been a regular social dialogue with trade unions and staff representative bodies in all countries, and we've started vaccinating also. Two weeks ago, we were the [indiscernible] company that had vaccinated the highest number of employees internally, and we're still doing it as much as possible. As soon as we have doses, we give vaccinations. It's also been a managerial challenge. I think the biggest challenge was to keep being in charge of a group while preserving something that is more difficult, the work-life balance. There's no longer distance transportation to separate the two, and it's really been an issue for everybody. I think that we were able to meet this challenge because of the country organization of the group. I'd like to thank all of my colleagues for making that possible and we were already pioneers in the area of working from home. Even before the crises, we had 13,000 employees who used to work from home on a regular basis. Now we have 6,000 more employees who said they would continue to work from home. What are the consequences we're expecting from this? First, the crisis may amplify the existing trends like working from home, the organization of flexible work. Those trends existed before, and they have been reinforced by the crisis. I think that the future organization of work, except for metis, that have to be local, the people working in shops or repairing. For all of these, we'll have hybrid working methods where shared working stations are going to be places where employees will meet, talk and it will not be a permanent office. We've shown you a bridge. I think that bridge is going to be a first example of a kind of place where there will be more employees coming from time to time than resident employees. This is what we want. What have we launched also to work on the future? We have a form on the new ways of working with social partner. We have called upon outside expert scientists working on those areas. We're also launching some analysis on psychosocial risks related to those new ways of working. We also call upon a neuroscience lab to see how remote exchanges, Zoom and all this, can change the brain and the way it works. I think this will have a positive impact for my colleagues in charge of business development, be it in TGI or OBS to have those studies to see how the technologies we market are going to be enriched in order to take into account those societal changes that will probably happen slightly faster than expected before the crisis.

That was perfect. One last question, if we may to wrap up this session. What concrete actions could Orange continue in order to remedy the situation of senior citizens who our are at a distance from digital? This is something that I care very strongly about, inclusiveness, and it's one of the societal priorities in our 2025 plan. So I'll ask Elizabeth Tchoungui, who is in charge of these matters within the team to please answer this.

Thank you, Mr. CEO. Ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholders, good afternoon. Thank you for this question. Yes, this is indeed a major challenge. We know that there are a number of our fellow citizens who are not necessarily comfortable with carrying out administrative procedures online or activating geopositioning to move about paying for a train ticket or protecting their personal data or simply seeking information or entertainment. So this matter of digital inclusion is part and parcel of Orange's corporate purpose, as the CEO recalled, as also did Beatrice and Miguel, senior citizens have been clearly identified as a target for our strategic plans. Very soon in France, the 7 Orange digital centers that are being put together will offer support programs for senior citizens in the area of digital. Many training programs are already offered such as digital workshops. These are collective classes, free of charge offered to everyone on their time. Orange employees can provide advice, pointers or tips to help senior citizens on how to work a smartphone or how to carry out procedures, and this program supported 5,000 French citizens, and 95% of participants were over 55. To take part, you just need to sign up on the website, [indiscernible] ready dial and their equivalents in other countries. Orange also puts in place other actions to meet the specific needs of senior citizens via its commercial offerings with the accessibility range that helps citizens with some impairments, visual or auditory, to carry on benefiting from digital services and also via an adapted customer experience. So we have 245 stores that are labeled with inclusiveness, and we have the specific call center in Poland, to name but one example. These are just a few of the actions that Orange is putting in place to help senior citizens who have difficulties with digital.

Thank you so much, Elizabeth. Thank you so much to the whole team that you could get a glimpse of -- for that. This is the end of this Q&A session. And now I will give the floor to our Secretary General, Nicolas Guerin.

Thank you, Mr. CEO. Ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholders, it's my pleasure as Secretary General of Orange to present the resolutions that were submitted to you and to share to you -- share with you the results of the votes. As a preliminary note, I wanted to tell you that the work of the Board of Directors and more specifically, the governance of the group are described in the Universal Registration Document 2020. The document is available on orange.com, at this address here, and you have it in the convening notice for the AGM. A few words about your group's governance because of the COVID-19 crisis that we are still going through. In 2020, this epidemic had a significant impact on the changes in the global market for digital services. But as a matter of pride for us, Orange and services and networks helped guarantee the continuity and the economic life of the country. Apart from regular steps in life of the company such as the examination of operating performance, financial statements and remuneration of corporate officers, your Board was very much involved in supervision proactively with great vigilance, supervising the situation of the group and also all the measures put in place to guarantee the good operations of the company. In 2020, the Board met 12 times, not including the preparatory meetings for its Committees. It has met 5 times since 2021, with a higher attendance rate from directors as part of remote conferencing meetings. As you can see, very quickly, your Board is fully -- has been fully mobilized since the beginning of the crisis, and I hope that this will give you reassurance about the quality and the high level of governance that your governance cares about -- that your group cares about as the general management and Board of Directors. Before I give you details on the results of the vote on resolutions, as part of the permanent share ownership -- shareholder dialogue, the following shareholders asked written questions. [indiscernible], 13 questions; [indiscernible] 1 question ; [indiscernible], 1 question; [indiscernible], 3 question; [indiscernible] GC Orange, [indiscernible] 21 questions; [indiscernible] and [indiscernible] 8 question; and [indiscernible], 2 questions. That's a total of 48 questions. This high number of questions show how much our shareholders are interested in your company and its business. The Board of Directors that met at beginning of the afternoon finalized the answers, and I'll invite you to read the answers on the dedicated website. The Orange action share ownership fund also wanted to put an item on the agenda. I will read the answer of the Board on this point on -- which has to do with access of women to high responsibility positions. The global agreement on professional equality between men and women signed in July 2019 with the International Trade Union Federation Unit Global provides for actions to be led by the company in 3 areas: professional equality between men and women, the fight against discrimination and violence and balance between work and life. These actions are shared with all the divisions, subsidiaries and entities of Orange worldwide and are deployed with the Diversity and Equality Committees that adapt them to the various context. They are also managed and followed regularly by group under the supervision of the Board of Directors via its CGRSC Committee. First about the feminization, especially of management circles. By 2025, the group set a target of 35% of women in management bodies in connection with the feminization rate of the headcount, which is now 36%. To highlight the importance of this challenge, this objective is including in the long-term incentive plans called LTIPs. By management circles that includes the management network of executive and leader executives group with over 1,300 people, these are very high responsibility positions for the group. At the end of 2020, the number -- the rate of women was 31.1%. To reach the goal set, Orange is putting in place an action plan based on 4 areas: promoting the application and selection of women for executive positions via a balanced process for the detection and selection and a proactive approach for potential candidates; creating and highlighting the visibility of female talents with the creation of specific pools and -- of women; and also promote development actions for women, making sure that there is gender balance in all development programs within management circles through dedicated mentoring programs, by supporting them in their career development projects over the long term, all thanks to their participation in intercompany program events or networks, but also inside the company with the umbrella network Wenity and also raise awareness around gender balance through the voice of the general management with the fight against stereotypes; a promotion of general balance and promoting communication by women who have a role -- who are role models in their background. More women on management circles also means recruitment of more women from outside. But over 80% of our recruitments are in areas where female profiles are fairly rare such as in the area of innovation and technology or in design -- software design and production, data analysis, consultancy and integration of information systems or cybersecurity. Then regarding the reduction of the wage gap for comparable situations within the group. As part of the Global 2019 Agreement, the group is committed to reducing wage gaps between men and women to reach wage equality for comparable situations by 2025. At the end of 2020, the situation of group varied between entities and between countries with a wage gap for comparable situation, ranging between minus 4 points in favor of women to plus 9.4 points in favor of men. Internationally, the situation is satisfactory in terms of wage equality in most countries where the country -- where the group operates in Africa and the Middle East. The wage gap is even favorable to women in some countries. The situation is acceptable, but a bit more mixed in Europe and in the entities of the Orange Business Services division. In France, the wage gap for comparable situations is between 0 and 5.8 points, depending on entities with almost wage equality for comparable situations for employees in Orange S.A. and Orange Cyberdefense. As part of the Professional Equality Index published every year, including wage gap, Orange S.A. got an overall score of 94 out of 100 for all indicators. To further improve wage equality between men and women, the group's put in place a common statistical framework to measure wage gaps between men and women homogeneously between all countries with direct comparisons and for comparable situations to identify potential gaps for comparable situations and analyze them based on criteria based in age, hierarchical level and a job and if necessary, design a local action plan to reduce that. In 2020, with this tool, several action plans were highlighted within the group. By way of example, some companies decided to award specific budgets to reduce the gaps that were identified for comparable situations. As the case for Orange S.A. in France or Orange business services entities internationally, in Egypt and the U.S., in India, the U.K., or Slovakia. Other companies reached awareness with their managers about the gender equality issue when they were awarding individual raises; that's the case for Orange Spain or Orange Romania. Orange is still changing the analytics tools that are made available to the group in order to more easily identify relevant action plans when local situations justify that. Additional -- useful additions to the answers provided can be found in section 224 Nonfinancial Risk Framework and 433, Orange's Engagement for Company Inclusion in the URD. I will now move on to the resolutions. As you know, because of the COVID-19 epidemic, shareholders could vote only remotely before the general meeting was held. Thus, I'm going to give you the results of the votes that were closed yesterday at 3 p.m. after reading the resolutions. The first 35 resolutions were presented by the Board, 18 are for the ordinary part and 17 for the extraordinary part of the AGM. Two resolutions were presented by Orange Axion and were not approved by the Board, and they are lettered A and B. Let's start with the resolutions related to the accounts for the fiscal year 2020. Resolutions 1 and 2 are here to approve the statutory and consolidated accounts. Resolution 1 for the statutory accounts was adopted with 99.63% of votes. Resolution 2 on consolidated accounts was adopted with 99.63% of the votes. Resolution 3 to allocate the distributable income and pay out to shareholders a dividend of EUR 0.90 per share. This resolution was adopted with 88.08% of the votes. The remainder of EUR 0.50 per share will be paid out on 17th June, 2021, because an interim dividend was already paid on 9 December, 2020. Resolution 4 is about so-called regulated agreements. No new agreements were approved in 2020. Only previously approved conventions with continuing effects were covered by the special report of the statutory auditors that you are to take note of. The Board of Directors cares strongly about this good practice. This resolution was adopted with 99% -- 99.86% of the votes. Now let's move on to the appointment of directors. Resolution 5 of suggest to reappoint BPIfrance Participation for the statutory duration of 4 years until 2025. BPI Participation represents the public on capital. They own 9.56% of Orange's share capital; that's a total of 22.95% for the French public entities. The Board of Directors was informed of the appointment of Thierry Sommelet as permanent representative of BPIfrance. He's now a [ teller. ] The resolution was adopted with 85.19% of the votes. Now let's move on to the resolutions on the statutory auditors, the mandate of current auditors, EY Audit and KPIG (sic) [ KPMG ] as well as their supportive firms, Auditex and Salustro Reydel, are -- will expire after this AGM. Salustro Reydel and Auditex essentially have been statutory auditors since 1991. Because of the European reform of auditing, their mandate cannot be renewed. On behalf of Orange, I would like to thank Ernst & Young Audit for all the work done during their successive mandates since the creation of the company. Their deep knowledge of the group, their professionalism with which they undertook the work throughout the period, the quality of the interaction with the Orange team, especially with the Board, were specific assets during the life of your company. So we need to appoint new statutory auditors. Their terms for 6 fiscal years would expire in 2027 after the AGM that will decide on the votes -- on the accounts for the fiscal year 2026. Selection was managed by the Audit Committee in line with best practices. For that, a technical committee chaired by the Chairman of the Audit Committee was tasked with examining applications, hearing the candidates and making additional checks in interaction with the Audit Committee. The main criteria selected in the choice of candidate were written applications as well as oral interviews, so they were on the understanding of the business of the group, the expertise in the team, the future audit approach and also the price of the offering. They needed to have a sufficiently wide network to cover this geographical locations, having a high international reputation and also having the necessary competencies and authorizations to meet the needs related to the fact that we are listed in the U.S. Since French law does not impose on us to appoint a replacement, we decided, given the size of -- to still a point of replacement, given the size of Orange. So based on these criteria, we are asking you to renew KPMG. Resolution 6 on the reappointment of KPIG (sic) [ KPMG ] was adopted with 99.20%. Resolution 7 on the reappointment of Salustro Reydel was adopted with 98.28% of the votes. Your Board of Directors would like to appoint Deloitte as new statutory auditors and with this replacement be yes. Resolution 8 related to the appointment of Deloitte was adopted with 99.87% of the votes. Resolution 9 related to the appointment of [ Biaz ] was adopted with 98.38% of the votes. Congratulations to our new auditors for their appointments. Moving on to the tenth resolution on the approval of the transfer the registered office to 111 quai du [ President Roosevelt ] in Issy-les-Moulineaux. You could get a glimpse of the new head office, and we are delighted to organize this AGM from this site today. The resolution was adopted with 99.98% of the votes. Now regarding the remuneration of corporate officers, including Orange directors. Items on remuneration for 2020 and the 2021 remuneration policy are mentioned in the convening notice and details are found in Section 5.4 of the URD. As part of Resolution 11, shareholders are asked to vote on the remuneration fate in the fiscal year 2020 are attributed for this year to corporate officers, including directors, for whom remuneration used to be called sitting fees. This resolution was adopted with 99.7%. The next 3 resolutions, 12 to 14, are about the remuneration paid in 2020 or attributed for the fiscal year 2020 to managers and corporate officers of Orange: Stephane Richard, CEO and Chairman; Ramon Fernandez; and Gervais Pellissier, delegate CEO. Resolution 12 pertaining to the remuneration of Stephane Richard is adopted with 96.84%. Resolution 13 related to the remuneration of Ramon Fernandez is adopted with 97.86%. Resolution 14 related to the remuneration of Gervais Pellissier is adopted with 97.87%. Resolutions 15 to 17 are related to a vote on the remuneration policy for 2021 for the Chairman and CEO, delegate CEOs and nonexecutive administrators, directors is called [indiscernible], familiar with that. Resolution 15 on the remuneration for the chairman and CEO is adopted with 84.10%. Resolution 16 on the remuneration of delegate CEOs is adopted with 84.77%. Resolution 17 on the remuneration policy for nonexecutive directors for their activity as directors is adopted with 99.9%. To close the ordinary part of the AGM, Resolution 18 is here, like every year, to ask you to authorize Orange to buy back shares during public actions, excluding public offering periods for a maximum price of EUR 24. It will be used for the specific staff 2021 offer. That -- the resolution is adopted with 99.75%. Now let's come to the extraordinary part of the AGM. Resolutions 19 to 30 and Resolution 33 are about financial authorizations. Because they are valid for 26 months, are presented to your vote every other year. They cover diverse situations for investors or for financial markets, if applicable, in order to gather the financial wherewithal necessary to the development of your company. Keep in mind that for the same nature of authorizations, 2 main options for delegations are presented. The first option is about the maintenance or not of the preferential rights for shareholders. The second option is the dissociation for the same authorization between a normal period in business and the hypothesis of a public offering on your company. This latter option leads us to present authorizations that are only applicable outside public offering peers on the shares of the company before similar authorizations are submitted to the vote, but only applicable during public offerings. Resolution 19 and Resolution 20, its equivalent during public offerings, help increase Orange capital with preferential rights. The maximum capital increase is capped at EUR 2 billion in nominal terms or 18.8% of current share capital. Resolution 19 for the authorization given to the Board to issue shares with preferential rights outside of public offerings is approved at 98.99%. Resolution 20, the same authorization, but during public offerings, received 52.26% of the votes. So it's rejected. For the next resolution, preferential rights are removed. The cap is set at EUR 1 billion nominally or 9.4% of the share capital issued. Resolutions 21 and 23 allow for capital increases without preferential rights with distinction between 2 capital -- 2 categories of investors, the entire public and qualified investors. Resolution 22 and 24 are their equivalent during public offerings. Resolution 21, the delegation to the Board to issue company shares during public offerings without preferential rights outside of public offerings, is adopted with 82.68%. Resolution 22 is the same authorization but during public offerings, with 40.64% of the votes, is rejected. Resolution 23 related to the authorization given to the Board to issue shares of offerings to qualified investors or restricted limited circles of investors without preferential rights outside of public offerings is adopted with 81.84%. Resolution 24, for the same authorization, but during off -- public offerings, received 40.50% of the votes. It is rejected. Resolution 25 authorizes the Board to increase the number of shares to be issued during the implementation of Resolutions 19 to 24. This resolution received 57.43% of the votes. It is therefore rejected. Resolutions 26 and 28 help increase carryout reserve capital increases as part of a public exchange offering to the shareholders of the counterparty that will provide their shares to the exchange for Orange or as part of an in-kind contribution to the company that would bring assets to Orange. In this case, the authorization ceiling is that for capital increases without preferential rights or EUR 1 billion. Their accounts appoints Resolutions 27 and 29 authorized to use that authorization during public offerings. Resolution 26 related to the authorization given to the Board to issue shares in case of public exchange offerings initiated by the company is approved with 98.75%. Resolution 27, during public offerings, received 40.67% of the vote. It is rejected. Resolution 28, authorization given to the Board to issue shares to remunerate contributions in kind given to the company outside of public offering, is adopted with 98.44% of the vote. Resolution 29 for the same authorization, but during public offerings, received 42.96% of the vote. It is rejected. Resolution 30 sets an overall limit on authorizations given via Resolutions 19 to 29, a ceiling set to EUR 3 billion in nominal terms. It's adopted with 98.42%. Resolution 31 authorizes like last year to grant performance shares to management, the corporate office as members of the Executive Board and certain executives within the executives and leader circles, limited to 0.07% of the capital. This attribution will be an LTIP 2021/2023, described in section 4.13 -- 4 -- 5413 of URD and the last pages of the convening notice. It's approved with 86.33%. Resolution 32 gives delegation like last year to the Board to carry out reserve capital increases for members of the group's share -- group's savings plan limited to EUR 200 million. It's adopted with 98.8%. Resolution 33 increases the company's share capital with the incorporation of reserves benefits of premiums. It's adopted with 99.6%. Resolution 34 authorizes the Board to reduce capital, limited to 10% of the issued share capital through cancellation of all or part of the shares acquired. This resolution is adopted with 88.25%. Resolution 35 gives powers for formalities, is adopted with 99.98% of the vote. Last chapter in the resolutions, those filed by the Orange Axion share ownership fund, lettered A and B because they were not approved by the Board for the reasons presented in the additional reports included in the convening notice. Resolution A is on -- an amendment to Resolution 31, authorization given to the Board to offer free shares of the company to all group employees with the same regularity as the attribution of LTIP to corporate offices and some members of Orange. This resolution received 16.51% of the vote. It is rejected. Resolution B is here to change the articles of association to set the maximum number of terms that directors elected by the AGM can hold. This resolution received 13.75% of the vote. It is therefore rejected. Thank you for your attention and stay safe.

Thank you. Thank you, Nicolas. Thank you, Ramon. Ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholders, this is the end of this annual General Meeting. Thank you for remaining loyal to this company, and thank you for taking part despite the specific format that I hope we'll be able to give up next year for a physical AGM very soon, hopefully, next year. Thank you once again, and see you very soon.