MILANO – Tension is rising in view of the extraordinary board of directors of Telecom Italia, called for tomorrow morning, Sunday 10 March. It was the CEO Pietro Labriola to ask the president Salvatore Rossi to urgently gather on Sunday a council to explain to all the members, by the president of the CDP, Giovanni Gorno Tempinito the five representatives of Assogestion. Labriola wants to clarify what went wrong on Thursday 7th, when – during the presentation of the plan to the market – the stock collapsed by 23.79%; and try to remedy it. Even because Vivendi (largest shareholder with 23.75%) has already devalued its participation for another 1.3 billion and it is likely to make its disappointment weigh in the assembly when it will be necessary to vote for the renewal of the board. Also Cdp (9.8%), which instead is oriented towards supporting the management list, will have to devalue his share in Tim. The possibility that on March 23rd two alternative lists will be compared, in addition to that of the management, after the debacle of the industrial plan, becomes increasingly concrete.
Telecom Tim rebounds and corrects the plan. Sarmi and Ferraris towards Netco by Sara Bennewitz 09 March 2024
Unions in alarm, in the silence of the government
Meanwhile, the unions are alarmed. Part of Labriola’s industrial plan underlies 400 million new cost cuts, without specifying how they will be made. But the strong suspicion is that they come from new personnel cuts, as analysts think, attributing part of the new expenses in the next three years to “exoduses”. “Our enormous doubts about the project of the network unbundling are all being confirmed – explains Salvo Ugliarolo of Uilcom Uil – We have always been critics of the project carried out in recent years by the company and of the green light given by the government”.
On the 13th a new meeting is planned between the company and the trade unions, given that so far Tim has not given reassurances on employment after the separation of the network from the service company, nor has the government yet expressed its opinion on the matter. “Must understand the sustainability of the entire project– concludes Ugliarolo, who reiterates the need to open a table with the government – having visibility of the times of the perimeters and employment levels”
Analysts perplexed by the plan’s numbers
Even analysts are starting to have doubts about the sustainability of the plan, because revenue and ebitda growth assumptions, especially for 2024, seem too ambitious, just as the cash generation, all postponed to the end of the plan, exposes the company to new risks. The suspicion is that an improvement in the telephony framework tricolor will only come from a consolidation of the sector, consolidation which for now does not exist, indeed the imminent wedding between Fastweb and Vodafone for Tim they pose more of a threat what an opportunity.
In short, to really generate cash, Tim will have to get married to one of the operatorsAfter all, Labriola has repeatedly reiterated that once the network is sold, he will return to studying the hypotheses of consolidation, where Tim aspires to be on the buyers’ side. The same goes for the additional billion in debt that Tim will have at the end of the year, which is the combined effect of a year of transition – still with the network inside – and of higher financial costs linked to the charges on the last slice of the debt, issued in 2023 at higher rates at 7%, which the company will not be able to refinance except in the medium term. Despite the fact that if everything went well, once the Tim network was sold could regain the report card from the rating agenciesand then return also to evaluate the possibility of paying a dividend to shareholders.
2024-03-09 16:41:07
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