Week 14 was relatively quiet for investors in the ever so volatile European telecoms sector, according Telecompaper.com. There were just two double digit share price increases, for Intelsat and Liberty Global. The Telecompaper Stock Index European Telecoms was up 2.1 percent for the week, against a gain of 2.9 percent for the EuroStoxx 50 index.
Belated Q4 results came in from Tiscali (-6.3%), while shifting focus to 5G and fixed-wireless access, and an MTS (+7.8%) subsidiary. Dividend announcements were published by Turk Telekom (+3.2%), skipping its dividend, Euskaltel (-1.1%) and Swisscom (-5.4%). More results related news was delivered by KPN (-0.6%), restating the 2018 numbers for the impact of the new IFRS 16 accounting rules on leases. SES (+9.7%) reported 355 million households serviced, or around 1 billion people.
Debt
Several companies turned to the debt market, including the already mentioned Tiscali, as well as Forthnet (+5.9%) for debt restructuring. Masmovil (+3.2%) announced a refinancing and Orange (+2.5%) issued a hybrid bond, raising EUR 1 billion.
Auctions
The ongoing spectrum auction in Germany, impacting Deutsche Telekom (+1.2%), Vodafone (+1.1%), Telefonica Deutschland (+2.3%) and United Internet (+8.6%), crossed the EUR 3 billion mark. Deutsche Telekom spoke of a possible spectrum shortage and United Internet announced further spectrum acquisitions. In the US, the ongoing mmWave auction passed the USD 1.8 billion mark, again with Deutsche Telekom, through T-Mobile US, among the companies impacted.
M&A
Potentially good news came in for Liberty Global (+11.6%), with the Sunrise (-1.4%) CEO appearing optimistic for reaching a deal to buy UPC Schweiz. At the same time, the sale of Liberty Global assets to Vodafone appeared to be headed for a regulatory approval. Finally, the Swedish parliament started discussing the possible sale of the state's 37 percent Telia (+0.6%) holding
