A new report highlights how a £330m revolving credit facility that matures next November, £685m worth of debt maturing in February 2025, higher borrowing costs and last year’s failure to agree a £3bn takeover by Virgin Media (here) has left broadband ISP TalkTalk with few options, and a break-up of the business is now expected. […]

Alternative network provider County Broadband has announced that they’ve begun construction of their gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network in five new villages across Essex (England), which forms part of their aspiration to cover 500,000 premises across the East of England by the end of 2027. The five new villages include: South Hanningfield and West Hanningfield […]

Mobile operator and broadband ISP Vodafone UK has discounted the prices of their Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) powered home broadband packages for new customers, which are available via both Openreach and CityFibre’s respective national full fibre networks. At present, Openreach’s gigabit-capable FTTP network already covers over 11 million premises, while CityFibre’s has recently reached around 3 million […]

Several months have passed since broadband ISP Trooli, which was rolling out a new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network across parts of England – before running into money woes and pausing its build, was rescued by Agnar UK Infrastructure (here). But we now have some solid info. on their progress and future plans. Just to recap. […]

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A summary of all the essential financial news in the telecoms world 

Virgin Media O2 releases Q2 results

Virgin Media O2’s (VMO2) quarterly results, published on Tuesday, revealed a 6.2% increase in adjusted revenue, totalling £2.7 billion. This drove transaction-adjusted EBITDA up 4.6% from the same time last year, to £1 billion.

The revenue increase was due in part to VMO2’s April price rises.

At the same time, however, the results revealed VMO2 had lost roughly 24,700 fixed line customers and 1,500 mobile subscribers.

“Amidst higher costs, rising usage and continued investment, we executed necessary price increases in line with our expectations, with this starting to flow through to our Q2 revenue and EBITDA growth,” said CEO Lutz Schüler.

 

Cellnex revenue rockets 18% on last year

Europe’s largest mobile tower company announced second quarter revenues of €1.02 billion, an increase of 17.8% on the same period last year, when the number stood at €862 million. The company attributes the increase to the continued posititive momentum of its core business.

Despite a 19.2% rise in operating expenses, adjusted EBITDA was up 17.4 % in Q2.

“We continue to see momentum in the business with strong growth across all of our industrial and financial metrics in the first half of the year,” said CEO Marco Patuano. “We are making good progress towards the objectives we set last November in the “new chapter” for the Group, with a focus on organic growth, positive free cash flow generation by 2024 and achieving investment grade by 2024 as well.”

The firm’s current net financial debt stands at €17.9 billion.

 

Telefónica’s 44.5% revenue increase

Telefónica’s Q2 results, released yesterday, showed that between April and June the company’s net income rose 44.5% to €462 million, compared to the same period last year.

Total revenue reached €10.1 million, with a growth rate of 0.9% year-on-year.

Net financial debt amounted to €27.5 million at the end of last month, 3.9% lower than last year.

The performance has allowed the firm to review their 2023 financial targets, including doubling their revenue target as they anticipate organic growth of 4%.

“Focused on the customer and the creation of shareholder value, and with technology as a decisive factor to better understand and connect with the world, Telefónica is preparing its 2023-2026 plan with a model of operational excellence based on three pillars: Growth, Profitability and Sustainability,” said Telefónica’s Chairman José María Álvarez-Pallete.

 

Vodafone’s share price rise after successful Q1

The release of Vodafone’s Q1 results this week demonstrated a successful quarter, causing the share price to rise 4% to 75.5% earlier this week.

Vodafone reported a 3.7% rise in organic revenue growth to €10.7 billion in the first quarter of this year, although reported growth fell by 4.8%. 

The firm’s solid performance in the UK, boosted by April price rises, largely helped to offset poorer performances in other key markets like Germany, where revenue dropped by 1.3%.

“We have achieved a better service revenue performance across almost all of our markets. We have delivered particularly strong trading in our Business segment and returned to service revenue growth in Europe” said CEO Margherita Della Valle.

“Vodafone delivered mixed results today, though with revenue ahead of expectations and the company taking advantage of price rises in April they are more on the positive side,” commented Matthew Dorset, analyst at Quilter Cheviot.

 

T – Mobile set Q2 record

In the release of its Q2 report on Thursday, T-Mobile announed a gain of 760,000 postpaid mobile customers, its highest increase in the quarter for eight years, and the most in the US mobile industry.

The total customer base grew by 1.7 million to a record 116.6 million at the end of June.

Service revenues of $15.4 billion grew 4% year-over-year, while core EBITDA increased 11% year-over-year to $6.7 billion.

“On the heels of our highest ever postpaid account net additions and industry-leading postpaid and broadband customer growth, we are raising guidance for the third time this year. Our Un-carrier playbook continues to win in this ever-changing competitive and macro-economic climate and our momentum is only getting stronger,” said Mike Sievert, CEO of T-Mobile.

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Also in the news: 

Cellnex names Anne Bouverot as Non-Executive Chairperson
Ericsson may be caught in the middle as Swedish–Iraqi relations sour
Nokia and Tele2 team up for private 5G in Sweden 

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The deal could help offset Vodafone’s struggling performance in the highly competitive Spanish market 

According to reports from Bloomberg, Telefónica has approached Vodafone on several occasions in recent months to discuss potential deals related to the companies’ Spanish broadband networks. 

The potential deal could take the form of a wholesale agreement, a partnership, or the transfer of Vodafone’s clients onto Telefónica’s fibre network. 

Vodafone have yet to comment on the proposal, with Telefónica’s Chief Operating Officer Angel Vila noting that “the ball is now in their court”. 

It is possible that the proposal has come as a result of Vodafone’s new CEO Margharita Della Valle launching a review of Spanish operations back in May, saying that “structural change”, including a full or partial sale of the unit, was a possibility. Following this announcement, Telefónica revealed its interest in discussing a potential deal between the two companies’ Spanish fibre networks. 

In recent years, Vodafone’s operations in Spain have been strongly impacted by the highly competitive nature of the country’s telecoms market. Ruthless competition with MasMovil, Orange, and Movistar has seen all of the operators locked in a seemingly perpetual price war, keeping profits painfully low. 

During the 2023 fiscal year, Vodafone had the highest decline in mobile service revenue at 5.4%, noting that competition in the mobile value segment “remained intense”. 

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Also in the news:
Orange-MásMóvil merger may reduce competition in Spain, says European Commission
Suitors lining up to buy Vodafone Spain
Vodafone sales increase as merger looms

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According to reports, the sale process could begin later this year 

Spanish tower infrastructure giant Cellnex is considering the sale of the minority stake in its Nordic operations (Sweden and Denmark), anonymous sources told Reuters earlier this week. 

According to the report, the firm is working with Spanish financial advisors AZ Capital to gauge potential interest in the operations, with the unit valued potentially valued at almost €1 billion. 

At the end of the first quarter of this year, Cellnex operated 1,576 sites in Denmark and 2,906 in Sweden. The exact value of these sites, however, is difficult to calculate; in its financial reporting, Cellnex does not separate the financial details of its Swedish and Danish businesses, which are instead simply part if its ‘rest of Europe’ unit, including Netherlands, the UK, Switzerland, Ireland, Portugal, Austria, Denmark, Sweden, and Poland. 

This ‘rest of Europe’ unit recorded EBITDA of €264 million in the first quarter of this financial year. 

The rumours of a stake sale for the Nordic unit should not come as a great surprise, with Cellnex CEO Marco Patuano saying back in March that the company was “open to consider (selling) minority stakes, maybe even (to) local investors… which might be interested in order to invest in certain areas of Europe”.  

After the announcement today , shares were up 4.7% this morning at €38.49.

After years of growth fuelled by various mergers and acquisitions — such as the takeover of CK Hutchinson’s European towers — Cellnex’s strategy has now shifted to focus on cutting debt, which stood at €17billion at the end of this year’s first quarter. 

The firm operates around of 135,000 sites across Europe. Earlier this year, Cellnex acquired the final 30% of OnTower from Iliad for €510 million, taking Poland’s site total to around 15,000.

In related news, this week saw Cellnex acquire a €315 million loan from the European Investment Bank, funds they say will allow them to deploy additional sites and upgrade existing infrastructure in Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, and Poland. 

How is the tower infrastructure market changing in 2023? Join the experts in discussion at this year’s Total Telecom Congress live in Amsterdam 

 
Also in the news:
Cellnex names Anne Bouverot as Non-Executive Chairperson
Ericsson may be caught in the middle as Swedish–Iraqi relations sour
Nokia and Tele2 team up for private 5G in Sweden 

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The partnership will allow Rakuten to cope with increasing customer demand on its 4G and 5G networks 

Japan’s newest mobile network operator, Rakuten Mobile, has chosen Oracle Communication’s cloud-native converged policy and charging solutions to support and accelerate its 4G and 5G services. It plans to onboard the solutions to Rakuten Symphony’s Symworld Marketplace. 

The Oracle solutions will run on Rakuten Symphony’s Symcloud Cloud Native Platform, allowing them to be easily scaled to support consumers and businesses across a range of industries. 

According to the partners, Oracle’s Converged Policy and Cloud Scale Charging solutions will help Rakuten to better monetise its 4G and 5G networks by supporting new business models and experiences, such as 5G-enabled virtual reality theatres. 

“Oracle’s policy and charging solutions position us to rapidly launch innovative offerings to meet new customer demands, including new data and voice service plans for enterprise and individual customers,” said Tareq Amin, Co-CEO of Rakuten Mobile and CEO of Rakuten Symphony.  

Rakuten created the Symworld Marketplace to make the process of telecom application onboarding simpler, making approved applications quickly available for all Symworld customers. The platform digitalises all telecom processes for planning, deploying, securing, and monitoring the software in live telecom networks. 

“Deploying Oracle’s converged policy and charging technologies will help empower more intelligent policy decisions and shorten the runway to quickly test, launch, and monetise new services,” said Jason Rutherford, senior vice president and general manager at Oracle Communications, Applications. 

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Also in the news:
Rakuten Mobile and KDDI strike roaming agreement
Ericsson shows off 5G Cloud RAN in Germany with O2 Telefónica
EU and Japan sign deals for subsea cables and semiconductors 

Independent UK rural broadband ISP GoFibre (BorderLink), which is deploying a new gigabit speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network across the North of England and Scottish Borders, has announced that their network footprint now covers 50,000 premises, and they’ve launched a new £50,000 fund to support charitable and community projects. Unveiled in celebration of their network now […]

International Public Partnerships Limited (INPP), the listed infrastructure investment company that is linked to investor Amber Infrastructure, has revealed that it is in the process of finalising the sale of their remaining stake in alternative network provider Airband. Last month we reported that Airband, which aspires to cover 600,000 UK premises in rural areas via […]