Victoria Fox's Blog, page 126

Cellnex grows 15% and achieves positive cash for the first time

Cellnex, the Spanish giant, European leader in telecommunications towers and other telecom infrastructure, billed 4,053 million in 2023, 16% more than in 2022. If the income from the rebilling of energy to customers is excluded, the billing is would have stood at 3,659 million euros, with a growth of 15% year-on-year. The gross operating margin (ebitda) stood at 3,008 million, with an increase of 14%.

The company closes the year with a positive free cash flow (FCF) of 150 million euros, compared to -1,115 million in 2022, thus consolidating this objective, initially planned for 2024, mainly due to the sale of sites in France to meet with the requirements of the French competition regulator.

Amortization (+10% compared to 2022) and financial costs (+11% compared to the previous year), both associated with the acquired assets, have given rise to a negative net accounting result of 297 million euros.

The net financial debt amounts to 17,287 million euros, which is 200 million less than in the previous quarter. 76% of the debt is referenced to a fixed rate.

Marco Patuano, CEO of Cellnex , noted that “in 2023, Cellnex had good commercial performance and solid operational execution, with revenue and ebitda in line with plan and positive free cash flow ahead of schedule. We have We have been able to meet our financial objectives, as well as our industrial objectives, thanks to prudent investment management and strict and rigorous control of our cost structure. Throughout the year we have made positive progress in reducing debt thanks to the sale of sites in France and the agreement with Stonepeak in the Nordic countries.

Divestments for 1,400 million

In 2023 Cellnex closed the sale in France of 2,353 sites to Phoenix Tower International (PTI) and the joint venture of PTI and Bouygues Telecom in accordance with the conditions ( remedies ) established by the French Competition Authority. Cellnex has earned 631 million euros from the sale of these assets, to which it plans to add an additional 360 million euros – after the closing of the transfer of the approximately 870 remaining sites – in 2024.

Likewise, in November, it closed an agreement with Stonepeak for the sale of a 49% stake in Cellnex Sweden and Cellnex Denmark for 730 million euros – equivalent to a multiple of 24 times the estimated ebitda in 2024.

Also, in line with the strategy of focusing on activities and businesses around telecommunications towers, in 2023 Cellnex closed the sale to Boldyn Networks of its private networks business unit, mainly made up of the Finnish Edzcom for 30 million. In this way, throughout 2023 it has made divestments worth 1,391 million euros, to which the additional 360 million must be added when the sale of the rest of the sites in France is closed.

The company points out that “in parallel, Cellnex continues to evaluate the possibility of monetizing other assets to crystallize value and accelerate the process to reach S&P investment grade.” Among these assets, the sale of 100% of the Irish subsidiary is very advanced, for which the main candidates for the purchase are the American Phoenix Towers and SBA.

Poland

Likewise, the sale of a minority stake in the Polish subsidiary has also been launched, in which KKR, GIP and Macquarie would be interested. The value of the subsidiary is around 4,000 million euros. The potential sale of the minority stake in the Polish subsidiary is directly related to the purchase of the radio network from Play, one of the 4 mobile operators in Poland. Cellnex already controls the radio network of Polkomtel, another of the Polish operators, and if it took over Play it could mutualize the networks of the two operators, achieving important industrial synergies. It is the case that the two major rivals of Play and Polkomtel and Play are Orange and Deutsche Telekom and these two groups have already created a joint mobile network subsidiary, which gives them competitive advantages over their other two rivals.

Business

The bulk of Cellnex’s business is infrastructure services for telecom operators, mainly towers, which in 2023 accounted for 91% of total revenues, with 3,685 million euros, which represents a growth of 16% compared to 2022.

Broadcasting infrastructure activity (TV and radio signal transport networks, mainly in Spain) contributed 6% of revenues with 230 million. Businesses focused on security and emergency networks accounted for 3% of revenues, with 138 million euros.

As of December 31, Cellnex had a total of 113,175 operational sites (without taking into account the 16,080 sites planned to be deployed by 2030, which would bring the figure to around 130,000). Of them, 23,737 are located in France, 22,160 in Italy, 16,040 in Poland, 13,218 in the United Kingdom, 10,535 in Spain, 6,541 in Portugal, 5,487 in Switzerland, 4,616 in Austria, 4,104 in the Netherlands, 3,114 in Sweden, 1,985 in Ireland and 1,638 in Denmark.

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Banking, hunting for the promises of 4YFN

For the first time, the MWC start-up hall brings together pavilions from Banco Santander, BBVA, CaixaBank and Banco Sabadell.

One of the things that draws the most attention at this year’s 4YFN , the entrepreneur show organized within the MWC , is the preeminence that banking has taken. For the first time, the four main Spanish entities, Santander, BBVA, CaixaBa

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Sustainable networks versus 'Big Tech'

The large ‘telecos’ have made the moderation of the rate of traffic growth on their networks and the consequent reduction in energy consumption the objective of their ‘lobbying’ policies at the Mobile World Congress.

Sustainability of networks, “softwarization” of infrastructures and application of AI to optimize deployments and management, are some of the key trends that have dominated, from a strategic and regulatory point of view, the

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Marco Patuano collected 2.1 million in Cellnex in 2023

Marco Patuano, the CEO of Cellnex since June 4, 2023, received 2.1 million euros in total remuneration during the 2023 financial year. It so happens that Patuano shared the position of CEO of Cellnex throughout the year. the telecom infrastructure company, since Tobías Martínez, his predecessor, remained in office until he was replaced by Patuano, in the middle of last year. Martínez, for his part, received a total remuneration of 1.48 million euros for the first six months of 2023.

The sum of both remunerations, that of Martínez and that of Patuano, represents a total of 3.58 million euros. This figure is 6.7% higher than the 3.35 million euros that Martínez earned in 2022 alone. Even so, the remuneration figures for the last two years were substantially reduced compared to the 4.96 million and 4.37 million that Tobías Martínez had earned in 2021 and 2020.

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“Final Fantasy VII Rebirth”: nostalgia? Completely overestimated

Just the music! How it rises in the right moments. It underlines the scenes that were so important back then. She whispers: Well, do you remember? And yes, fans of course want to remember. They want to reminisce about when everything was much better, especially video games . But then Final Fantasy VII Rebirth takes a turn into new territory. And maybe that even makes it better than it was back then.

The continuation of the major remake project, which began in 2020 with Final Fantasy VII Remake and will only end in a third part, initially picks up where the predecessor ended. He, in turn, retold – rather loosely and with a lot of freedom – the beginning of Final Fantasy VII , which first appeared in 1997. It’s not all that easy to get through – but that’s always part of the story of a Final Fantasy.

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Vodafone denounces that up to 20% of mobile traffic is 'garbage' that is not consumed

Vodafone revealed yesterday that “up to 20% of the traffic flowing through a mobile base station may correspond to unrequested content (by customers) that no one uses or sees.” Vodafone refers to the so-called infinite scroll, which consists of the online content provider with short videos preventively sending unsolicited videos to users, so that they are preloaded.

As Vodafone notes, “Infinite scroll was designed to make web browsing more fluid by eliminating separate pages and allowing continuous scrolling of a web page. The feature has become ubiquitous in many short video apps that preload the following videos before the user scrolls down to view them. For Santiago Tenorio , Director of Network Architecture at Vodafone Group, “many online applications decide what the user should see next and, although it can improve the user experience by reducing waiting time, uncontrolled content preloading also has unintended consequences.” desired”, since many of those previously sent videos are not consumed. This means unnecessarily loading the network with content that is wasted and consequently increasing energy consumption.

Faced with these social media practices, Vodafone and the Broadcom group have designed a software tool – called Smart Connectivity API – that analyzes the level of network congestion in real time and allows content providers to adapt to the conditions of infrastructure, moderating shipping if there is congestion. The problem is that it is the content providers – that is, groups like Facebook or Tiktok – who should be willing to use the tool to moderate the emission of traffic and, for now, they have no incentive to do so.

This is precisely what the president of Telefónica, José María Álvarez-Pallete, was referring to this week when he pointed out at the MWC in Barcelona that “it is essential that we encourage technology companies to make responsible use of network capacity and energy consumption.” ” We need to motivate them to make responsible use of the network.”

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Swisscom negotiates the purchase of Vodafone Italia for 8 billion

The Swiss operator Swisscom and the British Vodafone have confirmed that they are maintaining “exclusive advanced negotiations” for the acquisition by the Swiss company of 100% of Vodafone Italia, valued at 8,000 million euros.

According to separate statements from the companies, although the full terms of the transaction have not yet been defined, Swisscom and Vodafone Group have agreed on a preliminary purchase price for Vodafone Italia of €8 billion in cash and debt-free.

If the transaction is closed, the Swiss telecommunications company has expressed its intention to merge Vodafone Italia with Fastweb , Swisscom’s subsidiary in the transalpine country, Europa Press reports.

In this sense, Swisscom is confident that the operation will increase value and cash flow for the company and that, after the acquisition, it will maintain at least an ‘A’ corporate credit rating, as well as a positive impact on its dividends.

For its part, Vodafone has highlighted its collaboration with various parties to explore market consolidation in Italy and has expressed its opinion that this possible transaction “offers the best combination of value creation, initial cash receipts and transaction certainty for Vodafone shareholders.

However, the two operators have stressed that there can be no certainty that any transaction will finally be agreed upon.

At the end of last January, Iliad , an operator controlled by French tycoon Xavier Niel, announced that Vodafone had rejected its revised offer to merge the businesses of both companies in Italy.

This revised proposal offered Vodafone the merger of the businesses of both operators in Italy through the creation of a new entity (NewCo) in which each company would control 50% and which would provide the British company with a cash payment of 6.6 billion euros. , 100 million more than the initial offer, and a shareholder loan of 2,000 million euros.

For its part, Iliad would obtain 400 million euros in cash and a shareholder loan of 2,000 million euros.

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The Government will demand commitments from Zegona to buy Vodafone

The Ministry of Digital Transformation will thoroughly examine the reliability of the operation and, as with Orange-MásMóvil, plans to request long-term commitments from the British group with the country.

The Ministry of Digital Transformation and Public Function is concerned about the purchase of Vodafone Spain by the financial group Zegona, according to sources familiar with the process. Zegona is a British company, listed

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Screen time: cell phone away from my child!

Do children need a smartphone? And how much screen time is good for them? Few other questions polarize so much and lead to such heated discussions at the family table, at parents’ evenings, in teachers’ rooms. The fact that almost everyone among young people has a cell phone hardly excites people anymore. Last year, daily online time was three hours and 44 minutes. It seems all the more worrying that more and more children own a smartphone : in 2022, 27 percent of eight to nine year olds had such a device, 58 percent of ten to eleven year olds, and 80 percent of 12 to 13 year olds .

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"AI Pin" by Humane: The future doesn't need a screen

Smartphones are not a law of nature. Even if they are omnipresent today, they have only existed for a good decade and a half. There was a time before the smartphone and there will be a time after. The longing for the time to come soon seems to be growing at the moment.

There are various ideas about what this future looks like, which essentially differ on the question: How much screen do we want to have in the future? A lot, right in front of your face with Apple Vision Pro and Meta Quest 3; at least a mini screen on the AI walkie-talkie Rabbit R1; or, perhaps the most radical idea: no more screens at all. The start-up Humane imagines the future with the AI Pin, a kind of badge that you can talk to.

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