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February 11, 2013 at 07:02 AM
It’s a sector whose long-term fundamentals are rather dismal, to say the least, and for many investors, European telecom is looking less and less attractive despite low valuations because so many companies, faced with a serious cash crunch, are slashing dividend payments in order to cope with the financial strain.
However, for investors focusing on quick and easy value creation, even slashed dividends can compare favorably with low valuations and make for continued opportunities in the European telecom space.
“Telecom companies tend to be valued on their ability to pay dividends to shareholders, but although we are forecasting a 50% dividend cut for European telecom companies, when we look at that in the context of valuations and where they are currently, we come out with a figure that’s still attractive and in certain cases, makes for a good investment for us,” said Bryce Fegley, portfolio manager of Saturna Capital’s Global High Income Fund. Through the sovereign crisis, Fegley has invested in several European telecom companies including Spain’s Telefonica and France Telecom, which has paid him back 10% on his initial investment, he said.
France Telecom, like all other European telecom operators (Telecom Italia is the latest to join the list) has had to cut dividend payments in order to control debt and cope with increasing competition, but in the context of current valuations, which in Fegley’s opinion are still cheap, it and other telco stocks in Europe are still worth it.
“If you use a simple dividend discount model, you’d see that the cumulative value of many European telecom stocks is significantly higher than where the companies are now trading, so as pessimistic as we may be on the longer-term outlook of the sector, the valuations are just too attractive to pass on,” Fegley said. “We get companies that yield double digits based on their last dividend, and even when we model a significant cut to the dividend followed by terminal revenue decline, we still find that the market price is too pessimistic, and that works well for us.”
When European telecom companies lower their dividend payments, many investors actually become more enthused because they believe that in the current economic context, this contributes to the companies’ longevity, according to John Buckingham, Chief Investment Officer at Al Frank Asset Management. The ensuing rise in stock prices bodes well for value investors like himself, up to a point, of course.
A company such as Portugal Telecom (PT), for example, passed Buckingham’s value test from a technical perspective, but it is also, he says, a company that is well positioned for the near term because of a number of other positive attributes.
