Our portfolio of Top Picks was higher again in October, and now up 69% ytd. This month we make no changes to our top picks. This note also includes key news & other thoughts, to try to help investors generate alpha within the EM Telco space.
We analyze how much revenue EM Telcos are generating from digital businesses, and therefore at what point they are likely to make the transition from being “Telcos with digital assets” to “Digital first”. We use this to predict when the market is likely to re-rate those exposed, and as a result make multiple upgrades across our GEM Telcos.
Orange has reported a solid set of results, with Telco revenue and EBITDA in-line with consensus expectations; Bank losses are lower than expected and Group EBITDAaL guidance has been lifted as a result (despite a small downgrade to OBS guidance).
After months of speculation, there is finally an offer for SFR in France. The deal structure is a lot more complicated than we thought it would be, but we think the offer is a fair one. We think the offer implies a synergy payment of €4.2bn, and values the SFR equity at €15/share, if XpFibre, UltraEdge, ATS, Intelcia, and FOT are indeed worth €4bn, as the release suggests.
The price war at the low end of the French mobile market, which began at the beginning of summer 2024, and which we have written about extensively (HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE), appears to be coming to an end, thanks to some tariff changes that should lead to higher APRUs. We show some new work on tariffs in France in this short report, that should be good for all the MNOs.
New Altice France debt and equity is now trading. Given the material change in bond terms, and the creation of a new separately traded equity piece, we reassess our rating, and think that at these levels the bonds look pretty fairly valued, and so take the bond rating to Equal weight from Overweight (the old bonds ended up +20% from the lows), and initiate on the equity with a Neutral, as we think that the equity is already implying a high probability of a deal happening, and see minimal underli...
Despite a small slowdown in MSR trends, the SA market saw further improvements in total revenue growth, EBITDA and OpFCF margins in H1. Telkom continued to gain revenue share in mobile, driven by prepaid while Vodacom continued to gain share in fixed. Trends on the SA market have been improving since two years ago, helped by the reduction in loadshedding and an improvement in the macro environment.
The Sub-Saharan African (SSA) operators performed well again in Q2 with service revenue trends accelerating further, and stable OpFCF margins. MTN was the outperformer in terms of both local currency and $ top line performance in Q2, Airtel performed well too. Nigeria has contributed meaningfully this quarter, with local currency growth there accelerating to above 60%. The full effect of the price increase in Nigeria has helped and we expect another strong performance
After 8 extremely strong months, September bucked the trend. 6 of our Top Picks saw profit taking with only Airtel Africa, Millicom, Telefonica Brasil and LILAC posting positive returns. This note also includes key news & other thoughts, to try to help investors generate alpha within the EM Telco space. Having strongly outperformed we switch out Millicom for AMX which we now see as a cheaper, lower risk, way to play Latin American telcos.
Local currency growth accelerated to above 60% in Q2 (from 40% in Q1), driven by a full quarter impact from the 50% price increase approval, and the improving macro. EBITDA performance in Q2 was very strong for both players and especially for MTN.
There have been a few recent reports that the sale process for XpFibre has heated up. It has been suggested that a sale might eventually be pulled and the stake used as a sweetener in any eventual deal; but actually, a sale could also be the first domino in the whole M&A process, as an XpFibre sale would help to ease leverage concerns that Bouygues might have from acquiring SFR. We still think a SFR-Bouygues deal is more likely than not by year end, and that Bouygues is the best way to play this...
Moody's Ratings (Moody's) has today assigned a Baa3 rating to the two EUR-denominated hybrid securities both with maturity in 2055 to be issued by Vodafone Group Plc (Vodafone or the company). The outlook is unchanged at stable. RATINGS RATIONALE The Baa3 rating assigned to the new hybrids is on...
August was a rather eventful month for two of top picks as LILAC announced the Puerto Rican asset separation and Kyivstar, the Ukraine arm of VEON, successfully listed on the NASDAQ (see our initiation HERE). All of our top picks performed well again. This note also includes key news & other thoughts, to try to help investors generate alpha within the EM Telco space. We make our first change to the list, swapping TIM Brasil for Telefonica Brasil.
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