This research brief evaluates and analyses key figures from the financial statements of publicly listed German and European telecommunications companies. Furthermore, their capital market performance and pertinent multiples are presented and compared with each other.
We find no indications of a structural over- or underperformance of German companies compared to their benchmark candidates and no fundamental differences in the performance indicators. There are, however, inherent differences between wholesale-only, vertically integrated and service providers, which are reflected in the corresponding indicators. The capital market valuation is significantly higher for wholesale-only operators in comparison to other business models. This leads to the expectation that in the future further companies may disintegrate their infrastructure operations and sell or list them separately on the stock exchange.
