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).
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.
We published our Global High Yield Quarterly this week – HERE. For a European perspective, we provide a summary of our thoughts and ideas on the European HY issuers in this piece, which takes excerpts from the Global HYQ and adds to it, including asset cover and a summary of our most preferred and least preferred names.
ARCEP published its 2023 customer satisfaction data today. It makes for interesting reading for all the French operators. We show the key conclusion in this report. It is perhaps of particular interest to SFR investors: our view is that SFR’s troubles are mainly customer related as opposed to do with network or price (although all three are inter-linked obviously).
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