In the first half of 2024 the aggregate turnover of the main ones Global telcos grew 1.5% compared to the first half of 2023. Asian companies drove the sector with an increase of 2.8%, thanks to the players Japanese (+3.1%) and Chinese (+2.9%) cwho have benefited from the strengthening of the market share in 5G and the advanced degree of industrial diversification.
ICT revenues and innovative services for the top Asian players already account for over 20% of the overall numbers. These are some of the data contained in the annual survey of the major global and Italian groups in the telecommunications sector published by the Mediobanca Research Area.
Europe and the USA are chasing
Him too EMEA operators are growing (+1.4%), while the American telcos show a slight contraction by 0.2%. Differences also remain in terms of operating profitability: the Net Operating Margin (MON) of the first six months of 2024 is grew by 4.3%, thanks to EMEA (+11.7%) and Chinese companies (+8.2%), despite the -1.1% marked by the Stars and Stripes groups which nevertheless preserve the best EBIT margin in the sector (21.0 %).
The companies Europeans recorded a greater increase (MON at +15.5%), mainly determined by the performance of Vmed O2 UK (from 85 to 512 million, +501.4%, following lower depreciation of 396 million), TIM (+19.1%) e Deutsche Telekom (+15.1%).
Investments down
The investments have decreased overall -5.1%, with peaks of -13.6% in the Americas and 8.6% in Europe, despite the fact that the Old Continent is late in the development of 5G and, more generally, in achieving the connectivity target of the “gigabit society” project to compete internationally. To reach them it is estimated to be between 170 and 200 billion needed of additional investments at European level by 2030.
According to the Ericsson Mobility Report, the 5G subscriptions have risenin June 2024, at 1.9 billion worldwide (equal to 22% of overall mobile subscriptions), with 320 operators having launched commercial 5G services, of which only around sixty in standalone 5G mode.
The European ranking
The European revenue ranking in the first half of 2024 is dominated by Deutsche Telekom with 56.3 billion (+2.3% on 1H 2023), followed by Telephone with 20.4 billion (+1.1%), Orange with 19.8 billion (+2.5%, net of the Spanish activities merged into Masorange), Vodafone with 18.4 billion (+2.8% on 2023, without Spain and Italy), BT Group (11.7 billion; -1.2%), Altice (7.6 billion; -3.8% on a pro-forma basis) and TIM (7.1 billion; +3.5%).
With the registration of NetCo among the discontinued operations (sold in July 2024), the revenues of the Italian incumbent are driven by the activities in Brazil (+7.8%), while the domestic unit grew by 1.6%, thanks in particular to TIM Enterprise (+4.9%) e Sparkle (+0.4%), with TIM Consumer closing unchanged on the half-year comparison.
