Altice Europe is a France-based telecommunication company with a market capitalization of $4.8B. The company is the second-largest telecommunication and mass media company in France after Orange. A French-Israeli billionaire named Patrick Drahi founded Altice in 2001 as a cable television company. Today, apart from the TV service, Altice is a leader in internet and telephone subscription service.
The major countries of services for Altice include Western Europe, Israel, and the Caribbean. The company has also been providing its services in the US as one of the most used telephone and cable services. But in 2019, the company discontinued its operations in the US as a result of the spinning off of the company via an IPO in 2019.
A Brief Introduction
The company headquarters of Altice Europe lies in Woerden, Netherlands, and was founded in 2001 by Patrick Drahi. Cable television, Direct-broadcast satellite, broadcasting, broadband and telephony services, mass media are some of the fields Altice excels in and has its branches in several parts of the world. As of the records from 2017, the company is generating around €2,54 billion annual revenues and has over 47000 people working for it. Altice Dominicana S.A., Altice Portugal, Altice France (SFR), and Hot are some of its subsidiary companies. In the past 20 years, the company has seen many ups and downs, but still stands as one of the largest telecom networks in the world.
The Founding Story of Altice Europe
The founder of Altice Europe, Patrick Drahi, was already working in the field of cable television. He left his position from his earlier cable TV business and sold his share in the UPC for approximately 40 million Euros. He then started another cable company with the name Altice ATCE.AS in Amsterdam. The company started its operation by buying several European cable companies. In the years between 2002 to 2007, he was able to merge multiple regional companies into one and established Numericable.
By 2009, Altice was also expanding to other countries by acquiring their regional cable companies, Hot from Israel being one of them. The company also acquired the operations of Orange Dominicana of Orange for $1.4 billion in 2013. The next year, Altice went on to overtake the subsidiary company of Vivendi, SFR. During the same time, Numericable also bought the operations of Virgin Mobile France.
Altice also acquired the 70% stakes in Suddenlink Communications that helped Altice to grow in the US, and in Portugal, the company bought Portugal Telecom. In March 2017, Altice also acquired Teads, a video ad-tech firm. The same year, Altice also rebranded the company logo, and the slogan, for both Altice Europe and Altice USA to unify the telecommunication operations of Altice under one name. The slogan was “Together Has No Limits”.
In June 2019, Altice had an IPO and spun off the USA division of the Altice group to become a self-governing entity. The resultant company has the same logo and is also chaired by Patrick Drahi but operates as an independent company.
The Founder: Patrick Drahi
Patrick Drahi was born on 20 August 1963 in Casablanca, Morocco. He belonged to a Jewish family, which moved to Montpellier, France, when Drahi was 15 years old. After completing his high school education, Drahi joined the École Polytechnique University in Paris, where he received an engineering degree and a post-graduate degree in optics and electronics.
Drahi started his career by establishing a cable business in France in collaboration with an American company. After selling his post at the company, he then founded Altice Europe in 2001.
Other than Altice, Drahi founded Numericable as well as an international news channel, named i24news which operates in French, Arabic, and English languages. He also owns the Israeli cable television company HOT. Drahi has been named the third-richest person in France by Forbes in 2015, and till 2016, he was the richest person in Israel. In 2021, he was at the 248th rank on the Billionaires 2020 list of Forbes.
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