It was business as usual in the European telecoms sector, last week. Earning season was well underway, with some mergers news. The Telecompaper Stock Index European Telecoms Services was up 1.2 percent in week 30, just about in step with the EuroStoxx 50 index (+1.3%). Vodafone (+13%), Tele Columbus (+11%) and Iridium (+9.6%) came out the winners. Two data centre shares were among the biggest losers, Digital Realty (-5.3%) and Equinix (-3.5%), according to Telecompaper.
Quarterly results came in from the following companies:
- Telefonica (-2.5%) and Telefonica Deutschland (+1.3%),
- Orange (+2.2%), Orange Belgium (+4.0%) and Orange Poland (+4.1%),
- Crnogorksi Telekom (-3.2%) and Hrvatski Telekom (unchanged),
- KPN (-2.2%) and Telekom Slovenije (+1.9%),
- Vodafone (+13%), NOS (unchanged), MasMovil (-1.7%) and Euskaltel (-0.3%),
- Cellnex (+7.3%) and SES (+8.7%).
The M&A developments of last week:
- Apart from results, Vodafone also announced the creation of a European tower company and finalised its network sharing agreement TIM (+5.3%) and Inwit (+2.8%). MasMovil (-1.7%) acquired an MVNO.
- Altice Europe was (+7.8%) rumoured to have candidates to takeover its video ad technology company Teads and BT (+1.6%) is apparently looking to sell off its Latin America business, or indeed all of its Global Services division.
- The earlier announced acquisition of Inmarsat (+0.5%) by a number of pension funds will be reviewed by the UK government, whereas the Zayo Group (+0.3%) shareholders approved its takeover by private equity investors.
- Deutsche Telekom’s (+1.1%) T-Mobile US finally received approval for the acquisition of Sprint, albeit with conditions. They include helping Dish Network, with assets and servces, create a new number four mobile operator.
