Vodafone has confirmed that it is in discussions to sell its Italian business to Swisscom for €8bn having rebuffed a higher offer from Iliad for an Italian JV in December.

The Spanish and Italian deals should be reassuring to investors, are helpful to the growth profile of the company, and may help to reduce any conglomerate discount in the share price.

The all-important free cashflow impact of the deals remains to be seen with potential for buybacks of up to €10bn compensating for the direct dilution of the deals and softening the blow of any dividend downgrade in May.

Many telcos are surprisingly advanced in exploring GenAI opportunities, mainly in gleaning cost efficiencies in managing their complex systems, but it may also provide a revenue boost.

European telco CEOs made a heartfelt—if not entirely convincing—plea for regulatory/policy help via a ‘new deal’ to help support future investment, highlighting a genuine lack of price/investment balance in European telecoms.

The most convincing specific regulatory/policy solution is in-market consolidation, with other steps either less effective, or unlikely to happen, but a general shift in regulatory attitude could prove helpful in many small ways.

Meta's China risk is overstated: the spend from Chinese advertisers is diverse and resilient to everything short of a full-blown trade war. 

Apple (and Tesla) are in the more precarious position of selling directly in-market, and face sharpening domestic competition.

Amazon's exit from selling in China still leaves it exposed: its marketplace strategy is built on Chinese sellers, whose potential routes to market are proliferating with local platforms going global.  

Vodafone’s Q3 results were slightly disappointing following the green shoots of Q2, with growth in Germany slipping back again, albeit some of it already flagged.

It is difficult to imagine the full year results event being a positive catalyst with the likelihood of a dividend cut, a recognition of the hard-currency reality of the financials, and a still challenging outlook for FY 2024/25.

Deal-making is a positive counter with a highly accretive deal still in the offing in Italy, and the prospect of execution in Spain and the UK. Various inorganic deals with 1&1, Microsoft and Accenture will also be helpful, although none of them as valuable as an improvement in the core operations.

Sony PlayStation’s next CEO will have hard decisions to make: compete against a resurgent multiplatform Microsoft, or retreat and defend an increasingly rickety PlayStation console model.

New gaming hardware will have an outsize influence in the year ahead, giving gamers unprecedented choice, starting with XR headsets and continuing to a likely new Nintendo Switch.

YouTube’s foray into browser-based games will be the service to watch in 2024. If successful, streaming services, including Netflix, will be on track to become heavyweight game platforms.

Last week Google hit the headlines on the back of forecasts for its UK revenues for 2006 which we expect to reach £920 million, up 90% on 2005, cited as proof of a structural shift away from broadcast media to the internet

Neuf Cegetel will make an initial public offering (IPO) on Euronext Paris on 25th October. Proceeds of about €847 million are expected (if the ‘green shoe’ option is fully exercised and the price is set in the mid-range), of which about €250 million will be fresh money to finance the acquisition of AOL FR and other properties, and the rest mainly to founder Louis Dreyfus and exiting shareholder Suez. SFR (controlled 56/44 by Vivendi/Vodafone) will maintain its stake at 40.6%. The resulting float should be 20.3% of equity

Iliad is among the very few European altnets that have made unbundling a profitable business, despite France's highly contested market for broadband. This report examines Iliad's current positioning in this market, and the development of the media side of the triple play to grow ARPU and differentiate the brand

Sharp rise in EBITDA margin to 31% in 2005 as Free increases the share of unbundled (on-net) subscribers from 53% to 70% and retains tight control of marketing spend in the 'landgrab' for customers in France

The new management is teeing up the core UK business for a successful turnaround