Predictably, the Board of Tim, which met this afternoon under the chairmanship of Salvatore Rossi, chose the offer from the American fund KKR for the sale of NetCo, which includes the network and Sparkle. Consequently, the Board of Directors mandated the CEO Peter Labriola so that you can immediately start an exclusive negotiation with the American fund which should lead, if all goes in the right direction, to a binding offer from the Americans by September 30th. Why KKR and not Cdp-Macquarie? For two reasons: because the American offer is higher and has faster execution times. Of course this is not enough, for now, to overcome the opposition of Vivendi, Tim's first shareholder, who expects a richer offer and threatens to convene an extraordinary meeting to reject the entire operation and that is why today in Bag Tim stock suffered, losing 2,85%.
However one evaluates the merits, there is however no doubt that today's is a fundamental step forward by the Board towards the sale of NetCo, which prefers KKR's offer, but leaves the door half-open to other subjects, who could support the US fund in the negotiations. Among them could be F2i who a few days ago confirmed the hypotheses relating to his possible involvement in the operation.
Kkr, we recall, has put on the plate for NetCo 23 billion euros including two billion in earn outs.
Title in red for Vivendi's No to Kkr
Meanwhile, on the Stock Exchange, the Telecom Italia stock experienced yet another day of passion, with the shares registering a discount of 2,85% at €0,259 due to Vivendi's excesses. The French shareholder, who holds 23,75% of Tim's capital and over 17% of the voting rights, would have confirmed his opposition to the offer. The Financial Times wrote this morning that Vivendi expects to “oppose the offer to sell its prized landline in Kkr”. The company led by de Puyfontaine, in fact, considers the offer of the US fund too low, attributing a value of around 30 billion euros to the network, 7 billion more than those offered. In reality, the values of the network estimated by the vast majority of analysts are completely different and are close to those of KKR but Vivendi is desperately seeking to cover the losses accumulated in its disastrous Italian campaign.
Tim also towards the sale of a share in Enterprise?
Furthermore, another indiscretion arrived during the day – this time from Bloomberg – according to which, once the NetCo matter has been closed, Tim could decide to sell even one minority stake of Tim Enterprise, whose value would be around 6 billion euros. The company is already probing for potential investors, while the management would not rule out a potential combination on paper with the Engineering group. For ConsumerCo, on the other hand, hypotheses are being made of an agreement with Poste Mobile.
