(Il Sole 24 Ore Radiocor) – The purchases in Piazza Affari reward the Telecom Italia share in the wake of press rumors according to which Cassa Depositi e Prestiti is ready to raise the offer for the Tim network by 2 billion euros, bringing it to the 20 billion area. To report the rumors is Bloomberg, according to which «a final decision has not yet been taken and the terms could still change». However, no further details are added, so the values attributed to individual NetCo assets or the position of CdP regarding some of the requests on the Telecom side that had been leaked for improved offers, for example the taking on of the antitrust risk, are not known.
Compared to Kkr, which could also improve its offer (also from 18 billion before considering the 2 billion earn-out for the merger with Open Fiber), CdP has so far not acknowledged anything about the possible synergies of a merger, the Intermonte analysts explain, emphasizing that “even in the face of a raise of 2 billion, CdP’s offer would still be far from Vivendi’s estimates, which would value the network at around 31 billion”. Therefore, the experts underline, in view of the April 18 Board meeting, considering the prevalence of independent directors in Tim’s BoD (11 out of 14) following the exit of Vivendi, «the opinion of the advisors could be decisive in the future choices of the BoD ».
The duel between Kkr and Cdp-Macquarie with raises by 18 April
It should be remembered that a year ago the BoD had rejected the potential offer of Kkr of 0.505 euro per share on Tim which, according to the press, envisaged an implicit valuation of 25 billion for NetCo, but in a market context and much more favorable than today. According to Equita analysts, «from a purely quantitative point of view, the previous offer was indicated at 18 billion, with an impact for Tim’s debt of 15.4 billion. If CdP were to raise the offer to 20 billion, assuming that the entire increase is attributable to ex-FiberCop assets, for Tim the deleverage would rise to 17.4 billion, against the 16.1 billion of our valuation (built on an Ev of the network of 18.6 billion), with an impact of around 6 cents on our target. The group debt in 2023 would drop to 3 billion, before the extraordinary charges associated with the operation”.
