Apart from some minor M&A, last week's news mainly related to first quarter earnings reports. The Telecompaper Stock Index European Telecoms Services was down 0.4 percent for the week, versus a 0.1 percent gain for the EuroStoxx 50 index. Altice Europe (+8.9%) was the winner and Gamma Communications (-4.9%) gave up some of the gains of recent weeks. Both are doing fine in the year-to-date perspective, with gains of 69 and 46 percent, respectively.
First of all, last week's earnings reports:
Incumbents: Orange (-3.0%), Orange Poland (-4.7%), Swisscom (unchanged), Telekom Austria (-0.1%), Telenor (-0.5%), Proximus (-1.0%), Siminn (+1.5%)
Convergence plays: Telenet (-1.8%)
Mobile: Turkcell (-2.4%), Veon (+4.7%)
Infrastructure: Retelit (-0.9%), Equinix (+5.3%)
Satellite: Intelsat (+2.3%). Inmarsat (-2.1%)
We reported that the market entry of Iliad in Italy led to mobile prices now among the lowest in Europe. Indeed, one year after the entry the operators are still launching new plans and promotions. Last week, they included:
Vodafone (-1.3%) Italy: both the main brand and the Ho brand.
CK Hutchison (+0.2%): a plan and a promotion from Wind and a promotion from 3 Italia.
TIM (+0.1%): an updated plan.
On the infrastructure side, there was some action in the fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) segment, as well as in 5G:
TalkTalk (-1.8%) was looking to raise GBP 1 billion for its planned FibreNation venture.
Go (-3.9%), the Maltese incumbent, announced a fibre investment.
Fastweb (unlisted), Swisscom's Italian subsidiary, closed a reciprocal wholesale deal with fibre operator Open Fiber (unlisted) and promised a fixed-wireless (FWA) service, using its planned 5G network.
Siminn was preparing for 5G.
In Germany, the 5G auction was dragging along. Bidders include Deutsche Telekom (-0.3%), Vodafone, Telefonica Deutschland (+0.5%) and United Internet (0.5%).
Finaly, last weeks takeovers.
Orange Belgium (-3.1%) and Orange Poland acquired business services providers.
Altice Europe moved closer to finding a candidate for buying into its Portuguese network asset.
TIM was rumoured to be selling its Persidera unit.
