Altice Europe was last week's biggest winner, up 7.0 percent on news of selling a large minority stake in its Portuguese fibre network. Intelsat was the biggest loser (-7.4%). The Telecompaper European Telecoms Services index was down 0.4 percent for the week, underperforming the EuroStoxx 50 index which gained 1.0 percent.
Week 50 was relatively quiet, with important news form just a handful of companies. Here is a rundown of the main developments.
- Telefonica Deutschland (-2.7%) drew up a new investment plan around its 4G and 5G networks, as well as growth on the SME market. The dividend was reduced, but the company promised that capex would peak in 2020-2021.
- Deutsche Telekom's (-2.0%) US unit was part of the FCC's mmWave auction that kicked off.
- On the M&A market, Altice Europe's latest move was to sell a near-50% stake in its Portuguese fibre network to a Morgan Stanley fund. Vodafone's (+1.4%) troubled India unit, Vodafone Idea, denied a similar move to raise cash. Magyar Telekom (-0.7%) called off the proposed sale of its T-Systems unit, but KPN (-4.8%) was able to sell its ICT consulting subsidiary. Further, it was reported that the sale of the Greek ISP Forthnet (-4.5%) is expected in January.
- Corporate finance actions were undertaken by Germany's United Internet (-4.3%) and Italy's Retelit (-4.4%), both completing share buybacks. Polish Cyfrowy Polsat (+0.8%) issued a new bond.
- Two companies ventured into new directions. OTE (-2.1%) introduced a food ordering service and Turk Telekom (-0.7%) launched a B2B e-commerce service.
