When talking about Vodafone with market participants, almost all of the discussion tends to be on Germany. However, this morning my colleague Chris has upgraded his estimates for Vodacom and we have increased our target from ZAR150 to ZAR180 – with the full details published here. We believe the positive benefits from Vodacom are being overlooked in the Vodafone share price and we re-visit that thesis in this note with an updated view on Vodafone.
Newsflow on TalkTalk has been quieter than usual over the past few months and ahead of their FY results on 6 May. However, giffgafff (the second mobile brand of VMO2) has just announced plans to launch broadband service for the first time which has potential implications for TalkTalk, both related to a potential takeover and the competitive dynamics. We run through that in this brief note.
When the news of the Trump tariffs first hit the tapes, we didn’t write anything initially as a) we didn’t think we had much of value to add to the thousands of column inches already written on the topic, and b) the direct impact from the tariffs to the EU telecoms sector is minimal – resulting in relative outperformance for the group over the past few days.
Vodafone’s lock-up in India expires at the end of this month. Given the news today on a debt-for-equity swap involving the Indian Government at Vodafone Idea, we explore the implications of this and whether there could be a surprise value crystallisation for Vodafone on the cards.
Following Vodafone’s results earlier today, we now publish an updated model to reflect their comments. We reduce our price target from 150p to 135p (4.8x EBITDAaL), but still believe that Vodafone’s “ambition” to grow German EBITDA in FY26 could just be possible.
We recently met the CEO and CFO of TalkTalk to catch up on latest developments now that the refinancing is finished. TalkTalk still faces a tough time ahead but we came away marginally more positive. In this note, we review feedback from the meeting and our latest thoughts on the current bond prices between the first and second lien.
The merger of Vodafone-Three is the biggest change in the UK wireless market in many years. But potentially the second biggest change is the size of the spectrum sale from Vod-Three to O2. This has the potential to shape competitive dynamics for years to come and we believe we have unearthed new details of the spectrum transfer to steer people in the right direction for a likely outcome.
Over the past few months, we have been writing on the increased signs of competitive intensity in the German mobile market. We are only nine days into the New Year and sadly there are signs of this further heating up with new moves by DT and 1&1. In this report, we review those moves in more detail and consider the potential impact on all the companies involved (DT, Vodafone, Telefonica and 1&1).
2024 saw the best outperformance for the telecoms sector since 2013 (and the third best since 2000) and ironically this came in a year with one of the lowest announced M&A volumes. We believe this is a testament to improved perception of the underlying fundamentals.
TalkTalk has reported its H1 results to August, albeit given the lack of an investor presentation, it is hard to decipher all the changes vs. their guidance at this stage, but we think the numbers are at the low end of any prior guidance. We are still also critically waiting for any disclosure on KPIs since February, but we think the risk is to the downside given Openreach disclosure.
Vodafone’s H1 earnings call recently wrapped up with the stock having sold off during and after the call. We review our thoughts on this and in this note show some further analysis on what would be required to meet the FY EBITDA guidance based on the new comments given in the call.
Last week, we reviewed the UK altnet market. So this week, we turn our attention to Germany and how the fibre challengers are developing in that market. We have done a lot of work over the past few months on the MDU market in Germany for TeleColumbus and OXG. So now, we specifically focus on Deutsche Glasfaser and the recent UGG/ Infrafibre deal, as these players mount their challenge against DT in the SDU market.
Over the weekend, it has been widely reported that the upcoming Budget this Wednesday will include a 2pp rise for employer national insurance tax. In this brief note, we run through the financial implications of this for the UK telecoms companies (BT, VMO2, TalkTalk and Vodafone) and who is most exposed.
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