Sonaecom: Presentation on broadband Internet
18/11/2004 10:03
Rating: ACCUMULATE
Closing Price: EUR 3.50
Price Target: 4.15
Yesterday evening, Sonaecom held an extensive analyst/investor meeting to further explain its new ADSL products and what is behind their existence, in terms of technology, regulation and economics. The company explained the attendees that as an alternative fixed-line telco it has basically three ways of going broadband:
- Using PT¿s wholesale offer based on IP ¿ very low margins and not taking advantage of Sonaecom network ¿ the clients continues to pay the monthly fee to PT;
- Using PT¿s bit-stream ATM wholesale offer ¿ higher capex commitment to Sonaecom and taking higher margins by using more of Novis network ¿ the clients continues to pay the monthly fee to PT;
- Using the Unbundling of the local loop (ULL) ¿ higher capex risks to Sonaecom, higher margins (around 40%) and reasonable paybacks (below 22 months) ¿ the clients no longer pay the monthly fee to PT. It ends completely the relationship between PT and the «unbundled client». This is the process Sonaecom is using in its latest offerings of 2, 4 and 8 Mbps of speeds.
The main highlights from the meeting were:
- Out of the total 1597 main central offices (or local exchanges) of PT, covering some 3.6mn lines, the ULL process covers the opening of 143 central offices with a potential for 1.7mn lines. Of these, the company will have opened by the beginning of 2005 some 55 switches for both voice and datacoms, covering some 1mn lines.
- The new products are being marketed as «high performance» for an attractive price, not as discount/cheap products. This means that for now Sonaecom is not targeting those potential broadband customers at a monthly share of wallet of Eur10. The company is starting with a skimming strategy.
- So far, with very low advertising, the company already got what they call a surprising number of interested clients.
- The indicative P&L provided by Sonaecom on the ULL assumes an average margin higher than 40% and a payback of below 22 months. These calculations assume the first stage of acquiring the first 50-100k heavy users and ¿techies¿, though we still believe the company is somehow optimistic on the split between the 2, 4, 8Mbps products. On the other hand, the company will get significant opex and capex savings once they get higher scale with the mass-market.
- The company expects to get 8% market-share of the 1.7mn lines covered by the ULL regulation (143 central offices from PT), though not mentioning when they could get there. - Subscriber acquisition costs could go up to Eur180-200 per customer in a first phase and around Eur70-80 once it reaches cruising speed.
- The Triple-Play (voice + data + TV) is being studied by Sonaecom and could be the next big revolution, significantly cannibalising TV-Cabo´s offer. However, this can still take some time and investment efforts from smaller players.
The company recognises that there will be an initial capex and opex effort that will weigh on Sonaecom¿s P&L to launch the service. Investors will have to clearly understand the huge potential of this business case to Sonaecom, to allow the company to incur in short/medium-term sacrifices to get a much higher benefit in the medium/long-term. (Company presentation, BPI Equity Research analysis)
Comment
Impact: Positive and increasing the visibility of an attractive business case for Sonaecom and other alternative fixed-line telcos. On the other hand, this new products put at risk PT¿s fixed-line revenues and PTM/TV-Cabo¿s broadband revenues. It will be critically important to know what will be PT¿s reaction that will depend on both its technical ability to replicate these offers and its economic interest of doing that. Other issues that were addressed and are very important were: VoIP, distribution channels (Sonae group¿s hypermarkets, malls and PC/consumer electronic stores), other detailed technical and regulatory issues, ULL important problems to sort out, market segmentation, etc Ricardo Pimentel Seara, CFA (
ricardo.pimentel.seara@bpi.pt) Flora Trindade (
flora.mericia.trindade@bpi.pt)