The biggest news in the European telecoms markets was the sale, by Liberty Global, of UPC Switzerland to Sunrise, according Telecompaper. Altice Europe also attracted invester attention with reports of the planned sale of its Portuguese fibre network, in order to lower its debt burden. The Telecompaper Stock Index European Telecoms ended week 9 down 0.3 percent. The EuroStoxx 50 index was up 1.3 percent.
The news of Sunrise (-8.5%) buying UPC Switzerland sent its shares down, whereas the selling party, Liberty Global (+0.6%) ended the week up, suggesting that the latter got itself a good deal. Indeed, 25 percent Sunrise shareholder Freenet (+4.5%) said it wouldn't join in Sunrise's rights issue, needed to pay for the cash portion of the takeover, but that shouldn't come as a surpise. It looks like this will not stand in the way of the deal.
All three parties involved reported on their Q4 earnings. All in all, reports came in from:
Incumbents: Siminn (+3.3%), Proximus (-2.2%)
Cable operators: Liberty Global, Euskaltel (-1.6%)
Challengers: QSC (-9.5%), Freenet, Netia (-0.4%)
Mobile operators: Sunrise, Veon (+3.6%), Syn (-7.0%), MasMovil (-5.9%)
Satellite operators: SES (-2.8%)
M&A and new equity
Other important news related to M&A in various ways. Altice Europe, according to rumours, attracted seven potential buyers for its Portuguese fibre network. Cellnex (-1.3%) was mentioned as a candidate, itself announcing a capital hike for further growth. It will issues shares at EUR 17.89 (Cellnex closed week 9 at EUR 24.16). Veon denied rumours of planning the sale of its Beeline subsidiary, whereas Beeline in turn took control of RuRu, which provides payment services. Deutsche Telekom's (-1.1%) T-Mobile US said that its merger with Sprint was on track. Meanwhile, the European Commission is looking into the takeover of E-Plus by Telefonica Deutschland (-3.0%), suspecting that it is in breach of the concessions related to the takeover. Finally, Vivendi said that it would support a merger of TIM's (-1.0%) network and Open Fiber's (unlisted) FTTP network.
In addition to Sunrise and Cellnex, Equinix (+1.0%) also said that it was raising equity, pricing its new shares at USD 416.00, below the closing price of week 9 (USD 432.79).
Infrastructure and satellite up
Last week's best performing shares included Altice Europe (+13%), Inwit (+8.8%) and Iridium (+7.2%). The worst performers were QSC, Sunrise and Forthnet (-8.5%).
Year-to-date, the TPSI European Telecoms is up 1.1 percent, severely lagging the EuroStoxx 50 (10.4%). Performances vary across all segments, with the exception of infrastructure (towers, data centres, fibre networks) and satellite. In these two segments all consitituents are up for the year.
This year's leading telecoms stocks are Turk Telekom (+33%) and Forthnet (+33%), followed by tower operator Inwit (+30%) and satellite operator Iridium (+25%).
