India’s mobile revenue growth moderated as expected, as July 2024’s tariff increase has now been lapped. Jio’s IPO seems to be gathering steam, with Reliance rumoured to have appointed bankers after the government approved a change to allow listings with only 2.5% free float. Either before, or shortly after, we foresee another price increase.
We hosted a Zoom call with Liberty Latin America CFO, Chris Noyes, and Head of IR, Soomit Datta on Tuesday last week. We talked about CWC, Puerto Rico, Liberty Networks, cost cutting and LLA’s capital allocation. The overall tone was cautiously optimistic.
4Q results were decent with revenue and net profit accelerating to 3% and 13.4% YoY respectively, as assets acquired over 10 years ago are now fully depreciated. However EBITDA fell sharply YoY this quarter due to higher operating expenses, and total tenants decreased for the first time in 4Q from 3Q.
Thai telcos maintained 3% service revenue growth, with a solid EBITDA performance (+10% YoY), as both Mobile and Broadband ARPU recovers. TRUE’s net additions inflected to positive in Q4 in line with management’s outlook, following May’s network outage.
VEON printed a strong quarter, with Q4 revenue beating us by 4% and EBITDA ahead of us by 16%. The company has also announced a shareholder remuneration policy consisting of a minimum of $100m in share buybacks annually. However, we were surprised to hear of a $170m charge to settle claims from a previous minority partner in Pakistan
MTN Rwanda has reported a decent set of Q4 results. Top line trends remained robust, but EBITDA trends slowed. The company has maintained its medium-term guidance for service revenue growth and EBITDA margins but has cut its capex guide and although net income is back into positive territory this year, the BoD has recommended no dividends for 2025.
Stronger quarter, with revenue & margins recovering. NDRs we hosted with both KT and SKT were also positive. SKT as the stake in Anthropic has the potential to transform its valuation. KT as we see further upside from value-up. KT remains one of our top picks in Global EM.
2025 was such a strong year for EM Telcos with the result that while remaining bullish we thought it was not plausible that 2026 would be as strong. Yet if anything the year has started better than 2025, with our picks up 18% ytd already, and up 113% since the start of 2025.
MTN Nigeria has reported another strong set of results. The company has maintained its MT guidance for service revenue growth (“at least the low 20%”) and upgraded its MT guidance for EBITDA margins, from “53-55%” to “mid to high 50%”
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