Asia Telco Tour Feedback, Improving growth, ROCE and shareholder remuneration

We ran our Asia Telco tour last week. This time we met 12 companies in 3 countries (Korea, Japan, Thailand). Telco share prices in all 3 of these countries have been pretty strong recently as telcos continue to benefit from generally positive themes: growth, return on capital and shareholder remuneration are all typically improving.

Japanese Telcos Takeaways from Meetings with the Japanese Telcos + Rakuten in Tokyo. Incumbents still in good shape.

We met with all 3 of the incumbent Japanese Telcos & Rakuten in Tokyo this week. Every time we visit we are reminded of how much better the telco industry is in Japan vs other DMs and we continue to be of the view that Japanese incumbents are in a “Golden Age”; ARPU inflection is being held back a little we think by voice weakness post-Covid but is likely to come through over time. The integration of financial services though is a game changer and means SB is the likely medium term “winner” in the market.

Japanese Telcos Q3 FY23 review: Gearing up for a strong Q4

Service revenue trend was softer on slower non-mobile this quarter. Collectively, mobile revenue trend (Consumer + Enterprise) maintained its second consecutive of growth and operators are implying a strong Q4. For instance, Softbank is expecting Consumer MSR to rebound this year (at flat YTD); NTT implying a strong Q4 EBIT on cost reductions and streamlining of non-core assets like Real Estate.

What if the EV slowdown were not a headwind on auto semi growth?

EV adoption is slowing in the West, but to the benefit of hybrids. Is this well understood by those investing in auto semi stocks?

AMD 1Q24: Reaching critical mass in Datacenter GPU for 2025. It is good news to us… Buy, $200 TP

South African Telcos South African Telcos - CY23 H2 review – Modest improvements

H2 was a better semester for the SA Telcos. Service revenue and EBITDA trends improved and capex – while still above historic levels – was contained. However, improvements were modest as the environment remains difficult and growth remains limited.