iliad Group (iliad SA)

Is iliad publicly traded?

No. iliad was listed on Euronext Paris from 2004 until November 2021, when founder Xavier Niel bought out minority shareholders and delisted the company. It is now privately held and controlled by Niel.

Who owns iliad?

Xavier Niel, the group's founder, controls iliad through his holding structures. The 2021 squeeze-out removed remaining minority shareholders, making it one of Europe's largest founder-controlled private companies.

When was iliad founded?

The group's origins date to 1991, when Niel founded his first telecom businesses in France. It took its modern holding-company form around Free in the late 1990s and listed in 2004 before delisting in 2021.

What brands does iliad own?

The portfolio includes Free and Free Mobile in France, iliad's Italian operation, Play in Poland, Free Pro business services, Scaleway cloud, Stancer payments, ITrust cybersecurity, and Jaguar Network. It also retains a stake in OpCore, the data center venture now majority-owned by InfraVia.

What was iliad's revenue in 2025?

Group revenue was EUR 10.35 billion in 2025, up 3.2%, with EBITDA after leases of EUR 4.04 billion and operating free cash flow of EUR 2.25 billion. France contributed EUR 6.63 billion, Poland EUR 2.49 billion, and Italy EUR 1.25 billion.

Where does iliad operate?

Operations are concentrated in France, Italy, and Poland for telecom, with Scaleway's cloud services extending into additional European markets including the Netherlands and planned expansion to Sweden and Germany.

Xavier Niel founded the group's predecessor businesses in the early 1990s, building from Minitel-era services into internet provision. Iliad SA took its modern form as the holding company behind Free, the internet service provider that in 2002 launched the Freebox, a bundled triple-play offer that undercut French incumbents on price and hardware features simultaneously.

The defining growth moves came in mobile and geography. Free Mobile launched in January 2012 with pricing roughly half of incumbent rates, a disruption that reshaped the French mobile market and eventually forced consolidation among rivals. iliad listed on Euronext Paris in 2004, using public equity to fund network buildouts.

The Free model was consistent everywhere the group entered: own the infrastructure, strip out legacy overhead, pass the saving to the customer, and let incumbents absorb the margin damage. It worked first in French fixed broadband, then mobile, then was exported to Italy and Poland.

Internationalization came late but decisively. The group entered Italy in 2018 under the iliad brand, again as a low-price mobile challenger, and grew it into a business passing EUR 1.2 billion in 2025 revenue. In 2020 it acquired Polish operator Play for approximately EUR 3.5 billion, adding a third national market.

The ownership inflection point was 2021. Niel, already the majority holder with roughly 70% of shares, offered to buy out the remaining minority at a premium and completed a squeeze-out that delisted iliad from Euronext in November 2021, arguing that building fiber, mobile, and cloud infrastructure was better done away from quarterly market pressure. The deal was contested by some minority holders as underpriced, a familiar complaint in founder-led take-privates, but the delisting proceeded.

The post-delisting strategy pushed beyond telecom into B2B and infrastructure: cloud subsidiary Scaleway expanded into AI compute; the group added cybersecurity business ITrust, payments unit Stancer, and B2B network operator Jaguar Network; and it sold a majority stake in its data center business OpCore to infrastructure investor InfraVia while retaining a minority position, using proceeds to fund the network and cloud buildout. 2025 results showed the model working: revenue up 3.2% to EUR 10.35 billion, operating free cash flow up 23% to EUR 2.25 billion, and net debt reduced to EUR 9.43 billion.

iliad publishes group-level environmental reporting within its annual financial documentation, covering energy use across its networks and data centers, deployment of more efficient infrastructure, and renewable energy sourcing for facilities. The group's vertical ownership of networks gives it direct control over efficiency decisions that reseller-dependent operators lack.

As a private company since 2021, its ESG disclosure obligations are lighter than listed peers, and it holds no group-level B Corp or comparable certification. The scale of its infrastructure buildout, including data center expansion for AI workloads, keeps energy sourcing a live topic in its reporting.

Price war politics: Free's 2012 mobile launch triggered sustained price deflation in French telecom, drawing complaints and competitive complaints from incumbents, though regulators broadly welcomed the consumer impact.

Governance concentration: The 2021 delisting removed public market oversight, which critics noted reduced minority shareholder protections and disclosure depth, even as the group continues publishing annual results voluntarily.

Infrastructure sharing disputes: The group has periodically disputed with competitors over network access, fiber rollout obligations, and spectrum conditions in France and Poland, the standard friction of an infrastructure-owning challenger.

Founder adjacency: Xavier Niel's broader business interests, including stakes in media (Le Monde group) and international telecom investments, periodically draw scrutiny over influence concentration, though these sit outside iliad itself.