A CDP board meeting will be held today to finalize the new negotiation phase relating to the network in view of a meeting at the ministry tomorrow. This was reported by Il Messaggero according to which CDP would confirm its intention to present an offer for NetCo together with Macquarie and perhaps KKR. Vivendi intends instead to reiterate the minimum valuation for the asset of 24bn and push again for the non-proportional demerger. At the same time, the government should confirm its commitment to supporting the profitability of the asset, including the sector among energy-intensive companies and proposing a cut in VAT. On this last point, writes Equita Sim, it will be interesting to understand the details of the maneuver, as Minister Urso spoke in recent days of an intervention costing around 550mn for the State, while MF today reports evaluations by some sector consultants which assume decidedly higher values (up to 1.4bn), based on system revenues.
Finally, an article in the sole24ore newspaper highlights the negative reaction of consumer associations to the changes to TLC contracts introduced by some operators such as TIM (for fixed lines) and Wind (for fixed lines and mobile phones) to include the automatic adjustment of prices to inflation starting from 2024. TIM had anticipated this intervention in the call for the third quarter of 2022 only on new contracts. “It needs to be verified whether this variation has actually been introduced for existing contracts as well. Rather than an intervention by the regulator, we think that the possibility of passing an automatic inflation adjustment on new contracts and even more so on existing ones will depend on competitive pressure. To date, the article mentions that Vodafone, Fastweb and Iliad have not followed up” concluded by the Milanese SIM. Currently on the Stock Exchange, TIM shares are down by 0.7% to 0.26 euros.