February was another good month for our top EM Telcos, now up 15% YTD on average. This note also includes key news & other thoughts in order to help investors generate alpha within the EM Telco space. With performance strong so far, we make no changes to our picks.
Bharti Airtel has announced it intends to acquire 5% of Airtel Africa (which it already owns 57% of) and intends to complete this by March 31st2025. Airtel Africa are also currently in the process of executing a $100m share buyback in 2 tranches with the first $50m to be completed by April 24th 2025. AAF’s last RNS suggested the company has so far bought back $22m of this, leaving $38m still to be executed in the first tranche
SKT reported softer numbers against consensus, while its net profit benefited from a one-off equity valuation gain. Across its segments, SK Broadband delivered better trends, but mobile service revenue was soft, and EBITDA was impacted by a jump in labour costs. We expect costs to ease and margins to improve as SKT undergoes cost efficiencies and strips out less profitable businesses. Dividend payout was in-line with expectations if excluding the one-offs.
A director at SK Telecom Co Ltd bought 1,000 shares at 54,700.000KRW and the significance rating of the trade was 52/100. Is that information sufficient for you to make an investment decision? This report gives details of those trades and adds context and analysis to them such that you can judge whether these trading decisions are ones worth following. Included in the report is a detailed share price chart which plots discretionary trades by all the company's directors over the last two years ...
Airtel Africa shares jumped by 10% today after delivering a strong beat, with reported topline and EBITDA ahead of expectations by 5%. Reported revenue growth inflected to positive territory as East Africa improved whilst both local currency revenue and EBITDA accelerated. Separately, the group has reiterated its full year guidance for continued margin improvement and capex spending between $725m and $750m. AAF is one of our NSR GEM top picks for 2025, and we are Buyers with a GBp 200 price targ...
2024 contained a few surprises for the telcos, with the year starting with “Value-up” and ending with political chaos. Value-up is likely to have the longer lasting effects we think, and as most exposed and with the best strategy, and despite rising 33% in 2024, KT remains our top pick.
SK Telecom saw revenue accelerate again on the back of B2B Enterprise demand. Mobile also kept steady as the environment stayed benign. Notably, capex spend remains disciplined while operating profit was up 7.1% YoY off lower depreciation and continued cost control. The recently announced Corporate Value Up plan was largely expected.
Service revenue trend kept steady relative to Q2, albeit being slower than before due to macro headwinds. Yet earnings momentum continued to trend in the mid-single digits overall as we saw good cost control by China Telecom again (acceleration in EBITDA) while peers were cushioned by lower D&A costs (back by easing capex).
With the company unlikely to have been able to engineer a meaningful recovery by the end of the moratorium on payments to the govt, and the stock trading below the level at which it can issue new shares, we see the most likely outcome now as creeping nationalisation. Bad for VIL, but great for Bharti and Jio. We discuss implications for Indus in a separate note out today.
Following similar efforts in Europe and LatAm we are launching coverage on the HY Telcos & Towers in EMEA & Africa. New names under coverage include Helios (also initiated on equity, pt GBp140), Axian Telecom and Liquid Intelligent. We also address IHS Towers (pt cut to US$ 6), VEON and Helios’ bonds.
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