When was the last time we could write that the EU Telecoms sector has been the second best performing sector in the market YTD? As a result, this raises the question of whether the outperformance can continue. We believe regulation will ultimately determine the answer to this question.
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.
Orange has reported a very solid set of results, with Telco EBITDA c+0.7% ahead of consensus. AME and Europe EBITDAaL guidance has been lifted, but Group EBITDAaL guidance has been left unchanged, as the delta in AME and Europe is not yet big enough to move the Group numbers.
We hosted a call with Orange IR to discuss the pricing environment. Watch a replay of the call HERE. We provide a summary of the call in this short piece. Interestingly, it looks as though SFR has lifted some of its back book prices for some of its customers.
Q1 was a solid quarter for the Sub-Saharan African operators, especially from a top line perspective. Airtel Africa continued to outperform peers overall. We continue to think that fundamentals for AAF and MTN are strong and deserve more attention. Valuations are compelling too.
Nigerian Telcos continue to perform well from a top line perspective. Market service revenue growth accelerated (again) in Q1 with both MTN Nigeria and Airtel Africa growing underlying service revenue by ~33% YoY. As expected, EBITDA and profit metrics were weaker (especially for MTN) because of the Naira devaluation in Q1
Bharti crossing $100bn market cap makes us address the question of which parts of the Bharti/Singtel/Airtel Africa capital structure are most attractive. Bharti has the momentum, but the valuation gap is now extreme. Reversion to the mean will likely happen at some point which means sensible investors in Bharti should now be switching into Singtel (for yield) or Airtel Africa (for growth).
There has been a lot of focus on the recent change in mobile price points from SFR/Bouygues. Orange has underperformed the CAC40 by c10% over the last 10 days. Most commentary we have seen, seems to worry that the move by SFR will start a new price war at the high end. We think that is probably not going to happen, and explain why in this report. That is good news for Orange, that looks oversold in our view.
In this note we revisit and update our thesis that Enterprise in EM is following an S-Curve, using 2023 reported figures. Enterprise customer growth continues to exhibit an S-Curve, and absolute Enterprise revenues added remains very strong in many EMs despite a slowdown in growth rates. We remain bullish on this space.
Airtel Africa has published a decent set of Q4 results. Top line performance remained strong, service revenue growth in local currency came in above consensus expectations and above our expectations. EBITDA trends slowed (but remained decent given the macro context in Q1) and margins came in 1pp below consensus and us.
Orange has reported a solid set of results, with EBITDA c+0.4% ahead of consensus. Guidance has all been reiterated, and cost synergy numbers for Spain have been lifted (with new additional revenue synergy numbers given, that are based on intra-company churn switching data, which makes it plausible some could be delivered in our view).
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