Altice France reported results today and gave a lot more detail than they have done recently, including allowing some Q&A on the call. We give a preliminary overview of the trends in this report and will host a call in the coming days to look at the results in more detail, as there were some interesting new developments, including comments on M&A, NPS, KPIs, xpFibre sale and HFC switch-off.
Altice France has finally reached an agreement with its creditors (SSN and unsecureds). The agreement is pretty similar to the Cleansing statement (the main change being an equity stale for the unsecureds), and implies a c17% write-down in SSN before the equity stake. The equity stake is an important part of the deal, and we are currently below implied consensus expectations for the value here
TMT has published an interview with Andras Kranicz, Managing Director and Head of Infrastructure Finance Europe, BNP Paribas, in which a €5.8bn refinancing package is mentioned for xpFibre. The article goes on to talk about a potential xpFibre stake sale by Drahi. We run through the implications of this news in this short piece
The sector has had one of its best years for share price performance in 2024. This is impressive, but even more so when one considers that there is limited M&A premium embedded in any share prices – indeed 2024 saw the lowest amount of M&A activity since 2016.
Altice France reported results today, there was no Q&A on the call. We give a preliminary overview of the trends in this report, and will host a call on Monday of next week to look at the results in more detail, including a deep dive into valuation, as it is looks increasingly likely that bondholders will receive an equity stake in NewCo as part of any future deal with Drahi.
There have been several bits of SFR-related newsflow over the past week or so, including some new tariffs in France (from Bouygues HERE, and a new cut from Iliad today), some press reports on Apollo lending (HERE), an xpFibre re-fi (HERE), an extension of the SteerCo co-operation agreement to Feb 2026 (HERE), a new valuation for Drahi’s stake in German Fibre JV OXG (HERE) and a new offer to lenders from Drahi (HERE).
Last night Bouygues announced a surprise change to tariffs and updated some of its guidance. The new tariffs revolve around discounts for multiple SIMs, and follow on from Iliad’s family plan announcement on 1 October. We give our take on the new plans and the impact to the market in this short piece.
In this iteration of “Broadband Trends” we explore whether fiber builds are accelerating and how it will impact Cable’s subscriber growth. We also reprise our work on the competitive positioning of the various operators based on relative NPS scores.
This report covers changes to our model to incorporate recent management commentary at investor conferences. We have increased broadband losses estimate. We also lowered revenue and EBITDA slightly. The company needs to stabilize EBITDA and reduce leverage. Progress on the first remains sluggish and the second won’t be easy. We remain on the sidelines.
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.
Sotheby’s has announced that it has sold a minority stake to ADQ, an Abu Dhabi-based investment and holding company for US$1bn. Under the terms of the agreement, “ADQ will acquire newly issued shares of Sotheby’s to reduce leverage and support the company’s growth and innovation plans” – details are thin, but in this short piece we look at how the proceeds might be used and how the price compares to our valaution.
Broadband industry growth has slowed over the last couple of quarters. For 2Q24, we expect reported broadband net adds below last year and pre-pandemic levels. We estimate that after adjusting for the one-time impact of ACP related disconnects, net adds were still below last year but were in-line with pre-pandemic levels. We think consensus expectations for the quarter are a little too negative, especially for Cable, and we expect reported adds to be slightly better than expectations.
European Telecoms has had a reasonable first half of 2024 – up 7% vs. the market up 9% - and is up 15% since January 2022 – bang in line with the EU market. The sector trades in line with the market on P/E for similar earnings growth, but we still see two major structural levers of upside:
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