Angel Vila, General Manager for Finance and Corporate Development of Spanish incumbent Telefonica, has reportedly said that the company may divest assets in order to reduce debt and regain the trust of investors.
According to a Bloomberg report, Angel…
Angel Vila, General Manager for Finance and Corporate Development of Spanish incumbent Telefonica, has reportedly said that the company may divest assets in order to reduce debt and regain the trust of investors.
According to a Bloomberg report, Angel Vila said that the company is assessing its operations to find non-core or underperforming assets that could be divested.
Vila said that no one action would have a multi-billion impact, but it would involve an addition of several smaller efforts.
He specifically ruled out disposing Telefonica’s German or Mexican units, its business in the Czech Republic, or its 9.7% investment in China Unicom.
Carlos Winzer, senior vice president at Moody’s and a telecoms specialist, commented: “I am not expecting Telefonica to divest any assets for the time being and we have not factored that in our scenarios.”
On 10 November, Telefonica reported a large fall in its net income for the period January-September.
The net income figure for the whole group was €2.7bn, down 69.1% on the same period in 2010, following costs of €2.7bn due to workforce restructuring in Spain.
Revenues for the group stood at €46.7bn, up 5.4% on the previous year.
Across the whole group, the clear area of growth is Latin America, which rose by 18.1% year-on-year to €21.5bn, 46% of the group’s total revenues. Revenues at Telefonica Espana fell by 7% and Telefonica Europe (covering its European operations outside Spain) fell by 0.4%.
The company’s net financial debt stood at €55.4bn in September, down by €163m from December 2010.
