alwaysinvert

Millicom to sell remaining stake in Helios Towers (globenewswire.com) This completes the transformation into a Latin American pure play. With proceeds of about $180m if they sell at market price it should also give a good push to the upcoming buybacks.

The board of EPM has now officially decided to sell its part in UNE Tigo. This is probably not the final word, as it now enters a political process of which I don't understand all the intricacies. But some progress from the perspective of Millicom. Hopefully a deal can be finalized in the next 12 months. Junta de EPM aprobó la enajenación de su participación accionaria en UNE y Telco (larepublica.co)

They haven't restarted the buybacks yet. You are probably confusing that with the authorization at the AGM. You can view buyback activity on the Stockholm exchange here, it gets reported usually with a few days delay: Corporate Actions Stockholm - Repurchases of Own Shares - Nasdaq (nasdaqomx.com) When they start repurchases they will probably issue a press release with their criteria like they did last year, although strictly speaking that is not necessary to do as far as I'm aware (this could be impacted by their Luxembourg domicile, though).

Ramos is talking up the prospects of Millicom in the largest Swedish business daily: Millicoms vd Mauricio Ramos lyfter fram ”dold vacker juvel” (di.se) He mentions hidden infrastructure assets within the company (9,000 towers, 3,000 more getting built and 150,000 km of cable) and says they haven't decided what to do with them, naming spinoffs or sales as possibilities. They haven't shown much care for the stock price before. Merger talks on the horizon? Or maybe they just saw the reaction to the subsea cable comments by LILA. They have already had a quarterly call since then with plenty of opportunity to push that angle though. He also says buybacks could start in Q2 or Q3 (slight positive change from the earlier second half of the year), talks up the cable growth and brags about their ESG rating.

Who knows what the stock will do, but it is still orphaned. No strong owner (except Bill Miller, maybe he should go and plug it on CNBC right after bitcoin and AMZN), no dividend, no buyback, not a compounder. Being yanked around by index flows and with a tilt to EM, telecom and oil. Not exactly the most hot themes around. There's not any special reason why it should have underperformed LILA this much lately, except that LILA probably still has some more observers willing to dip in when they think the sucker could be turning. Even if almost everyone burned themselves out on that one too, it still has that Malone tag. Yes, LILA got some support out there for the stock with the subsea comments, but that still seems a couple of quarters away from being separated out properly. Had this quarter from Tigo been coupled with a reintroduced buyback, I wouldn't have been surprised to see the stock pop 20-25%. Earlier this year, I saw the exact same scenario with another Swedish traded SDB that had to postpone a large buyback program last spring - it popped a lot on the news of its introduction even though it was obvious what was going to happen to anyone following the company. Well, except if you thought management were liars for no good reason whatsoever. The risks from covid are all but over and what's left is just the regular old EM risk. Nothing to scoff at of course. But a way more unfocused and prepaid heavy Millicom traded at twice the current levels when it still offered a high dividend. Was that a bit too rich? Probably. But it is still says something, there's no rule that says the stock should have this level of discount just because it's EM. I may not agree with or understand exactly what they are doing on the financing side, but it looks like they are operationally being very methodical and looking long-term.

Millicom | Tigo - Q1 2021 results webcast - YouTube This quarter was good (in line with my expectations after hearing the Colombia subscriber numbers in advance and reading America Movil's Q1). For once, management was pretty much unreservedly bullish - they saw acceleration throughout the quarter and are expecting remittances to stay strong going forward. Fixed is looking strong everywhere and good signals for beginning of Q2 on the mobile side in Colombia. The way they talked about Tanzania (competitive sales process), I'd expect that they got at least something like 5x ebitda for the business. I could be wrong here - maybe African assets have even more of a discount against Latam than that. This would mean above $600m, with taxes and other costs that could probably come out at $450-500m when it closes. With the step-up in ebitda and the sales proceeds going to debt repayment leverage ratio is going down fast. Of course, I would prefer if they just started buying back stock right now. I don't think the debt is an issue here and it doesn't really need to come down more. But anyway, these numbers add up fast no matter which way you choose to go. And Ramos mentioning internal M&A tells me what we almost already knew, that they have an eye towards owning 100% in Colombia soon.

Tigo exited Africa completely today. Price for Tanzania not disclosed. The only non-core holding left is now the stake in Helios Towers (worth about $200m). Cristina Stenbeck sold all her shares during March, which seems to have soured the market on the stock lately. There have been some significant developments in Colombia - a political scandal around EPM in which the mayor of Medellin tried to establish more direct control over the company by hiring a crony as CEO. The guy was forced to step down almost immediately because he got caught lying in his CV. Lots of twists and turns in that, not all that interesting, but since the mayor has said that he wants to sell EPM's ownership part in Tigo UNE it does have some implications for Millicom. I'm interested as to what extent this sales process is making Tigo hold on to their cash for the time being. Meanwhile WOM is just about to enter the mobile market now, which has spurred a price war. Planes WOM en Colombia: cuál será el costo de los planes de Movistar, Tigo, Claro... - AS Colombia In this interview "Vamos por más instalaciones y en abril llegaremos a 300 antenas nuevas en el país" (larepublica.co), the CEO of Tigo Colombia seems to be revealing good subscriber growth numbers in the first part of the year. Google translated: Today we have more than 13 million customers. We have overcome the barrier of 10 million customers in the mobile business. To that we must add the almost 2 million customers in the fixed business, we must also add the SMEs that are more than 150,000 and more customers in the corporate world and the businesses we have with the entities. It's obviously only rough figures here, but this can be compared to 10m mobile customers and 1.74m home customers end of Q4. The total and fixed numbers that he gives seem to indicate robust QoQ growth of ~1 million total users and a continued good pace for the HFC (which was 1.48 of the 1.74m). So it's hard to see how Colombia will come in below expectations for Q1 on that front.

Here's a more detailed look at what the Chung family is trying to do: Hyundai Motor Group moving toward governance restructuring (koreatimes.co.kr) And a nice overview of the shareholdings

Would probably be a great entry point if you could establish confidence that Thomas won't piss away value sitting on his behind or, worse, investing in some new renewable scheme instead of returning capital. On second thought, under currrent market conditions the stock might pop if he plows money into underwater solar panels.

Agreed. I also feel compelled to answer here since the risk is that you will get responses disproportionately on the sycophantic side. It would be a short-term cash grab in exchange for the longevity of the site, as new blood is always needed to keep it going. There is no cachet associated with being a member here, as opposed to something like VIC, so ease of access is important. To be fair, the site has already been heading downwards in quantity of posts so it could be a good trade-off for the owner if we are looking at the inevitable anyways (not saying that's definitely the case). Sadly, the new forum design is worse than the old one without seemingly adding any relevant functionality from the member's POV. You did a donation drive a couple of years ago and I think I gave a couple of hundred bucks in that one, but tbh I'm not really up for being a customer of a message board. Having 20+ years of experience from all kinds of different niche forums, I strongly doubt that I'm alone in this. It doesn't matter what the hardcore "social" users say here - think about the ones who are going to provide new fresh stock pitches continuously, which is ultimately the life blood of the site. Maybe high monetization can be done, who knows. But be too aggressive and you *will* kill the golden goose.

Telefónica receives offers this week for its 2,000 million submarine cable Companies (smallcapnews.co.uk) $2.4b price tag for Telefonica's subsea network.

I think the correct approach now is to view it as a mixed player on the verge of achieving scale/getting IG. The best peers in terms of assets are probably Castellum and Kungsleden, although they are both less geared (Kungsleden 45% LTV, Castellum about 40%) and with only one share class. Odds are Arnhult moves to split Castellum in A,B and D shares soon enough, to match the setup of the new Corem. Perhaps Corem should trade at a discount to those two, but on the other hand it has a pretty clear implicit buyout put. If you buy the entity via Klövern now it is at a 30% discount to NAV. I think anything above a 15% discount is too high on a relative basis, but I obviously have no set timeline on it shrinking. Maybe when they publish their first NAV as a combined entity, it will wake up some more mechanically oriented traders and firms. Even on its own, the company will be able to work their financing costs way lower going forward. Provided bond markets stay liquid, naturally. Obviously I'm working off the assumption of no real deal risk here, which may be a touch aggressive, but I'm pretty confident in that judgment. I have looked at Stendörren and I'm told that they are well positioned in terms of what they own - but they are very small. It's certainly possible that they are in play for consolidation, both with who their largest shareholder is and from a financial POV. Still, I'm unsure if the valuation leaves enough upside here. Even if cap rate is the same, the merger logic is often more compelling with discount to NAVs, as that makes share-based payment easier. It could still be a good bet with their developments on a standalone basis or for EQT to take it private (which they have tried in the past).

I hear COBF is already negotiating with numerous spacs. Murmurs of a valuation north of $2b for this SaaSy name.

I will by the way warn anybody looking to arb this that the merger ratio will not be dividend adjusted. Corem pays 0.65 and Klövern pays 0.13 before the merger will be finalized. It has been trading with no deal spread pretty much all day.

There have been rumours on this combination going back a decade. However since it never happened before, the entities were pure plays in logistics and office respectively and most importantly Arnhult had a larger holding in Corem than in Klövern, I didn't consider it likely since he would have to pay with discounted shares from the Corem side. Castellum on the other hand could pay with both better valued shares and cash, owing to their solid balance sheet. That was my reasoning. The market seems to agree that Corem is giving up some value on its side. On the other hand it neatly solves a "political" problem that Arnhult would have in taking over Klövern with Castellum at this stage, in which he would have been raked over the coals in the media for his bias. That said, I fundamentally like the deal - I would have liked almost any movement from the status quo and this is fine, especially since it happened fast. I also think that the market is underestimating the changes to LTV from taking Klövern in-house and getting credited with its assets 100%. Additionally, the preferred to D conversion is extremely significant from a ratings perspective, as Moody's views D shares as 100% equity capital. Consequently, an IG rating while not imminent is probably decently close. Ultimately, I think that this entity will be combined with Castellum down the line. Maybe the sentiment for office space has to start thawing a bit before that happens, but I would not be surprised at all if it occurred in 1-2 years. I have no idea how the market thinks that this combined entity deserves the same discount to NAV as Klövern had last week. Makes no sense whatsoever.