After a quiet few weeks, press releases from the consortium this morning confirm that talks are still ongoing, and that due diligence is happening. The French press are reporting on a March deadline. We look at the implications of the release and reports in this short note.
Over the past 3 years, the EU telecoms sector has had a great run – up >50%, despite modest underlying revenue/ EBITDA growth. This has almost entirely come from a deserved upwards re-rating in the multiple as the risk profile across the sector diminishes – which has been a key theme of ours in the past few years given improved regulation. So, we feel this has now largely played out.
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...
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...
We have been long-term Buyers of Orange, and are pleased about the YTD share price performance (+37% vs the sector +10%). Some of that outperformance is probably due to the prospect of French market repair (France is 56% of the value), but actually it is the Spanish and AME divisions that cause our target to rise to €15.8 from €14.9 post the Q2 results.
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