Very few stock managed to close the week up. TDC (+17.0%) was a shining outperformer on news of a buy-out offer from Macquarie et al. Other stocks in positive territory were Finnish DNA (+1.1%), extending its big gain from the previous week, and satellite group SES +1.8%, having agreed to vacate spectrum for 5G in the US.
We recorded double digit losses for Orange Belgium (-11.6%) and British TalkTalk (-14.5%). Orange BE wasn't able to convince investors of the underlying strength of its results. TalkTalk suffered from a dividend cut, plans for a large-scale fiber-to-the-home roll-out and an equity placement.
Telenor (-5.0%) wasn't able to benefit from rumours of interest from Czech's PPF group for its CEE assets, which it had put up for sale two weeks earlier. Our index's heavyweights, Deutsche Telekom (-7.1%) and Vodafone (-8.1%), underperformed both the sector and the market, without significant news.
In the year-to-date view TDC is an outperformer with +14.4 percent, followed by DNA (+10.7%) and MTS/Mobile TeleSystems (+10.3%). The double digit underperformers are led by TalkTalk (-30.9%) and Intelsat (-23.9%). The others include CityFibre (-17.5%), BT (-15.0%), Orange BE (-14.4%), Vodafone (-14.1%), KPN (-13.0%), Deutsche Telekom (-13.0%), VEON (formerly VimpelCom, -12.2%), Eutelsat (-11.4%), Tele2 (-10.5%) and Altice (-10.4%).
