Orange Business FY 2025, facing the future with trust…

Update Monday March 2nd 2026 – Orange Business deals with Tech Mahindra for strategic alliance

This is a landmark move for Orange Business, the first time the division has entered a partnership of this scale and depth with a Tier 1 global Systems Integrator, and a direct execution of the CMD 2026 roadmap. The model is well-precedented: Telefónica Germany selected TCS as transformation partner in 2023, and Deutsche Telekom’s Magyar Telekom pursued a similar deal with Wipro.

Orange Business is now executing the same playbook but at Group B2B division level and with a mutual €400M commercial commitment, a far more ambitious construct implying genuine revenue co-creation, not just cost offloading.

At ~€80M/year of combined scope, the financial ambition is meaningful but not transformational relative to Orange Business’s €7.3bn revenue base, making execution velocity the critical variable.

The outsourcing of international customer support and order-to-cash processes signals a deliberate shift toward an asset-light delivery model, combining Orange’s #1 global secure connectivity franchise with Tech Mahindra’s 149,000-strong delivery machine across 90 countries. The Trade union consultation process, mandatory under French law, introduces timeline uncertainty before formal close.

Three key unknowns remain: FTEs in scope, net EBITDAaL improvement expected, and the contractual firewall protecting Orange Business’s sovereignty positioning in regulated verticals.

Observers will pay close attention to the differential impact across Orange Business units.

1. The partnership will be most closely watched on the Digital & IT Integration perimeter (€3,698M, -2.3% cb in FY25), where the revenue decline, reflecting a structurally challenged IT market and portfolio pruning: this is precisely the segment where Tech Mahindra’s delivery scale and go-to-market reach are expected to act as a growth catalyst, and where failure to reverse the trend would be most visible.
2. Orange Cyberdefense, by contrast, arrives at this partnership from a position of strength (revenues of ~€1.3bn growing at +6.8% in FY25, with double-digit CAGR ambition toward €2bn by 203) and will be expected to leverage the partnership selectively for international scale without diluting its premium trust positioning.
3. Finally, Connectivity (Fixed-only at €2,715M, -7.6% cb; Mobile at €912M, -6.1% cb) will be called upon as the structural anchor of the deal, contributing network and platform assets as the differentiating foundation that makes the combined proposition credible for global enterprise clients, even as its own revenue trajectory remains under structural pressure.

The « free cash flow (FCF) » doctrine, set by Orange Group, will twist the future.

Orange Business closed fiscal year 2025 with revenues of €7,325 million, a decline of -4.8% on a comparable basis, continuing a multi-year revenue reset that began in 2022. Yet framing this result as mere deterioration misses the analytical substance: the EBITDAaL trend improved for the fourth consecutive year, from -21.0% in FY22 to -6.3% in FY25, while the EBITDAaL minus eCAPEX line turned positive, at +2.2%.

Orange Cyberdefense delivered +6.8% revenue growth. The NPS rose 9 points year-on-year to 39, and the contract win ratio held at 48%. These are not incidental. They represent the continuation of the structural rebalancing within Orange Business, away from commoditised legacy fixed services and toward a higher-margin, trust-centric service model.

PAC detailed this transformation in its previous publications “Orange Business – Vendor Profile – France“

The Group’s FCF all-in reached €2.8 billion in 2025, up 74% versus 2022, and the new ‘Trust the Future‘ strategic plan targets c.€5.2 billion in organic cash-flow by 2028. For Orange Business, the FCF discipline embedded in this plan will have deep strategic consequences, constraining both the pace and the form of future transformation, while simultaneously elevating the value of partnerships as a capital-efficient growth lever.

Remarkably, apart from Orange Cyberdefense, all Orange Business business segments are declining. Not only Legacy Voice and the basic network, but also data, cloud and mobile. Only one growth engine is working. This is a serious warning for Orange Business strategy at a time when the group requires a strong Cash Flow attitude that will automatically amplify the Capex capacity in a Capex-intensive market.

Next year(s) will focus on FCF and the restoration of green lights for the basic business lines, with less emphasis on business development in new segments, innovation and transformation. At the group level, some business line separation (Globecast, ViaAccess) may be needed to unload the upper levels of the balance sheet. Some Orange Business subsidiaries are structured under a differentiated legal framework (Orange Business SA rather than Orange SA) and are more readily detachable than the legacy central business lines.   

Most notably, Aliette Mousnier-Lompré, CEO of Orange Business, explicitly flagged at the Capital Markets Day (Feb 19th, 2026) a strategic intent to pursue a ‘partnership on international footprint to boost scale, competitiveness, and go-to-market’. While no specific partner was named, analysts’ interpretation of the signal (in the context of Orange Business’s global managed services and connectivity portfolio) points naturally towards a major Systems Integrator (SI) as the most structurally coherent counterpart.

Questioned by PAC about this move, Orange Business commented, “There is no geographic split or divestment planned”. However, a strong partnership with a major SI in some countries to replace or augment local sales capacity may be a solution to reduce sales costs and local G&A in the USA and APAC region, where the business is more competitive and challenging. 

PAC believes Europe, the Middle East, and Africa may remain within the full Orange Business capacity because of large contracts and strong growth in verticals (Governments, Healthcare, Industry, Logistics…) associated with a stronger Orange Footprint where the group acts as B2C telco (Spain, Italy, Poland, Morocco, Tunisia; Jordan, Ivory Coast…).

In a word, and playing with words, Orange Business is facing its future from FY2026 onwards and will need trust and confidence in its ability to undertake the necessary transformation in a harsh competitive landscape.