Summary

  • Solutions30 says a French fibre-deployment contract that brought in €117.6 million in 2025 had a negative operating margin. It expects to complete the exit and related restructuring by the end of 2026; the customer, contract-level loss and expected savings have not been disclosed.
  • First-half 2026 revenue fell 11.1% on a restated basis, while adjusted EBITDA fell 46.3% and its margin contracted 280 basis points to 4.2%. France remained loss-making. The figures describe a transition still in progress, not proof that abandoning the contract will restore group profitability.

The revenue is known; the contract’s economics are not

The important number in Solutions30’s French fibre exit is not the €117.6 million the contract generated in 2025. It is the margin the company stopped earning on that work—and Solutions30 has not published it.

On 3 August, the field-services group said it would gradually cease activity under a major French fibre-optic deployment contract. The work represented about 38% of its French revenue and 13% of group revenue in 2025. Solutions30 said the operating margin had turned negative. Its half-year release on 17 September repeated that the contract was the group’s primary source of losses and set the end of 2026 as the target to complete the exit and restructuring. The customer, price terms, direct cost base and contract-level cash flow remain undisclosed.

The distinction matters. €117.6 million is a measure of sales, not of value destroyed. A negative operating margin means the work did not cover the costs assigned to it under the company’s measure; it does not reveal how large the loss was, how much cost disappears with the contract, or which staff, vehicles and local infrastructure can be redeployed. The decision to leave may be sound while the financial result remains uncertain.

The first-half bridge has not turned positive

Solutions30 reported €400.3 million of revenue for the six months to June, 11.1% below the restated prior-year figure. Organic growth was -13.6%; acquisitions added 2.6%. The comparison is restated to remove the UK and a divested Spanish telecom business, so it is not a simple match to the group’s earlier reported scope.

Adjusted EBITDA fell 46.3%, to €17.0 million, and its margin narrowed from 7.0% to 4.2%. Adjusted EBIT moved from a €5.2 million profit to a €6.3 million loss. The company attributes the lower margin primarily to France’s contract exit and, to a lesser extent, one-off repositioning costs in Germany. It expects the German margin to improve in the second half; that expectation is separate from evidence of French savings.

France itself generated €120.6 million of revenue, down 21.9% (28.7% organically), and adjusted EBITDA of minus €1.2 million, a margin of minus 1.0%. The company also says the reorganisation linked to the telecom exit affected its French Energy business indirectly. The disclosure therefore shows that the wider French operation had not yet returned to profit, but it does not allocate that loss between the contract, restructuring, energy work or other activities.

Reported net loss widened to €24.5 million from €16.8 million. That comparison was partly cushioned by €7.1 million of non-recurring operating income from deconsolidating and liquidating entities that operated the contract. The group also recorded €9.3 million of non-recurring operating expenses, including restructuring and headcount reductions across more than one activity. Neither line is a standalone calculation of the contract’s recurring contribution or the cash savings available after exit.

Cash is no cleaner a shortcut. Free cash flow was minus €25.5 million, less negative than minus €29.1 million a year earlier; net free cash flow, after lease-related cash effects, was minus €41.3 million versus minus €45.3 million. Yet net bank debt rose from €36.3 million at December to €67.1 million at June, while cash fell to €46.3 million. Solutions30 cites transformation spending, normal first-half working-capital seasonality and a €16 million reduction in non-recourse factoring. Net bank debt is not total net debt: the latter was €119 million after including lease liabilities and potential earnout or put-option obligations.

Those measures answer different questions. A less negative free-cash-flow number does not mean the balance sheet strengthened, and the half-year rise in bank debt cannot be assigned solely to this contract. The factoring balance fell from €61.4 million at December to €45.3 million at June, changing one source of working-capital finance.

The test begins after the run-off

Solutions30 says the contract will contribute no revenue from 2027 and describes its future scope as smaller but more profitable, with resources redirected toward Energy and Technology. That is a plan, not a quantified bridge. The September release gives no target for the costs removed, the margin retained in France, the utilization of redeployed teams or the cash contribution of replacement work.

The cleaner evidence will arrive in sequence: completion of the contract and restructuring by year-end; the French segment’s revenue and adjusted EBITDA after the contract is gone; and whether group margins and cash conversion improve without repeated non-recurring items. A top-line decline in 2027 would be consistent with the exit, but it would not by itself validate it. Conversely, failure to improve immediately would not prove the decision was wrong if the remaining costs take longer to leave. The missing bridge is precisely what future reporting needs to supply.

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