Telecommunications

Even a chastened SoftBank leans on engineering

2 June 2020

Boss Masayoshi Son is scrambling to clean up his “foolish” and costly WeWork mess. Instead of just selling some Alibaba shares, though, he’s using derivatives linked to them to raise $11.5 bln. The transactions are fiddly, but in this case may be a good use of creative finance.

Buyout firms make first move in EU telco shake-out

1 June 2020

KKR, Cinven and Providence are offering $3.3 bln for low-cost Spanish operator MasMovil. Stricter financial discipline may mean less of the cut-throat pricing that hurt rivals. After an EU court ruling on a nixed UK merger, it may also be the start of a new round of mergers.

Corona Capital: Hockey, HBO, Minority businesses

27 May 2020

Concise views on the pandemic’s corporate and financial fallout: A plan to get pucks back on the ice offers a sporting template. Meanwhile, HBO’s streaming service may have missed its moment, and a survey shows minority-owned businesses have mixed feelings about life after Covid.

Morgan Stanley gets closer to real Reliance prize

22 May 2020

Deals are flowing fast as Mukesh Ambani rejigs his empire. The U.S. bank has helped raise $10 bln for the tech unit from Facebook, KKR and others. It wasn’t on a bigger deal inked with Aramco but that’s less important, especially with the $70 bln Jio unit’s IPO on the horizon.

SoftBank’s clouds come with some silver linings

18 May 2020

A record $12.7 bln annual loss surpassed its warnings. But activist Elliott’s push is yielding results, funds are being spent less giddily and asset sales are on. The board is getting a revamp too, as Alibaba’s Jack Ma exits. The taming of boss Masayoshi Son is gaining traction.

BT’s misery puts new gloss on old selloff idea

15 May 2020

The UK phone giant is considering offloading part of its $24 bln Openreach network unit, the FT says. CEO Philip Jansen and his predecessors resisted a split. But he urgently needs cash to boost fibre broadband, and a sale could lift BT’s shares from this week’s decade lows.

White House only has half a 5G strategy

11 May 2020

The Trump administration has strengthened its telecom regulator’s ability to defend against problematic foreign involvement in the nation’s next-generation network. But building a robust 5G platform also means fostering decent alternatives to blacklisted entities like Huawei.

UK telecom merger harks back to pre-virus era

7 May 2020

Liberty’s Virgin Media and Telefonica’s O2 are creating a $39 bln mobile and cable giant. For a deal negotiated under lockdown, there’s little evidence of Covid-19. Valuations are robust and cost savings reasonable. A big dollop of extra debt allows both partners to extract cash.

Corona Capital: Payments M&A brawl, Endeavor

7 May 2020

Concise views on the pandemic’s corporate and financial fallout: Payments firm Wex’s attempt to ditch a double deal for two UK rivals will face legal pushback and perhaps Elliott Management’s ire. Talent agency Endeavor’s 2018 Epic Games investment is starting to come in handy.

Cable cowboy’s UK round-up puts Vodafone in corner

4 May 2020

U.S. billionaire John Malone is in talks to merge his Virgin Media broadband outfit with mobile operator O2. A joint venture could let Spain’s Telefonica, O2’s indebted parent, extract 4 bln pounds. Without a fixed-line partner in its home market, Vodafone faces a lonely future.

Phones will restore freedom at the cost of privacy

30 April 2020

Contact-tracing apps like Apple-Google’s will allow more public mobility but only if related testing is quick and easy, and everybody plays ball. That means democracies will wave sticks, disguised as carrots, to encourage use. Good results would outweigh the Orwellian overtones.

AT&T shows boring CEO transitions are needed

24 April 2020

The U.S. telecom firm is elevating John Stankey to replace long-time CEO Randall Stephenson. The transition has been in the works since Elliott came calling last year. But the pandemic has upended the world. Having a 30-year vet at the helm is now required C-suite experience.

Hadas: Cheap data at last gets its due

22 April 2020

Faster and inexpensive connections are being appreciated now more than ever, but U.S. government inflation measures miss most of the gains. A fairer count would push up historical GDP growth, new research shows. The pandemic suggests even the revised figure lowballs the value.

Corona Capital: Amazon, Procter & Gamble

17 April 2020

Concise views on the pandemic’s corporate and financial fallout: Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos pokes the French government; consumer giant P&G’s good fortune will be hard to keep.

Viewsroom: Freebies no more

16 April 2020

Breakingviews columnists check in from home in New York, San Francisco and Hong Kong to discuss disappearing Silicon Valley perks like free meals and booze, office activism at tech firms, the mystery of China’s 20 million lost mobile-phone subscribers and an ascendant TikTok.

Best thing about new AT&T is old AT&T

8 April 2020

The U.S. telco enters a downturn with huge debts. That’s not in itself a danger, but it leaves less room to invest in the movies, advertising and cable networks boss Randall Stephenson fought hard to acquire. Fortunately, telecoms now look relatively more appealing anyway.

Samsung discovers perks of working from home

7 April 2020

A surge in remote working activity lifted demand for chips used in data centres. That helped first-quarter operating profit rise 3% from a year earlier and offset the pain of lower smartphone sales. The South Korean giant is benefiting from the all-pervasiveness of semiconductors.

Videoconferences zoom toward market-boom reckoning

6 April 2020

The coronavirus has been a boon for companies hosting virtual meetings. That’s bringing forward the kinds of longer-term user numbers that Slack and Zoom predicted when they went public – and boosting their stock prices. But it’s not clear there’s enough profit to go around.

China’s missing phone customers stir viral concern

2 April 2020

Some 20 mln of them mysteriously vanished from $150 bln China Mobile and its two biggest rivals in February. It may be the first time all three carriers lost subscribers at once. Theories range from the conspiratorial to the more plausible. None of them is reassuring, though.

Huawei’s home safety net looks less sturdy

1 April 2020

Earnings at the telecoms equipment giant hit $9 bln in 2019, although growth slowed as U.S. curbs whacked overseas handset sales. That has forced a refocus on China. Unfortunately local carriers are spending less than hoped on 5G, and smartphone rivals like Xiaomi look tough.