The single network and the main road. But in order for it to really remain the only project standing, we need to clear the field of some shadows. Eight days after the approval of the industrial plan, the first signed by Pietro Labriola and which sanctioned the sprint towards a single infrastructure for broadband, a system with the assets of Open Fiber, the time has come for Tim to discover the papers on the Kkr dossier. Last November, the American fund put on the plate an offer of 50 cents per share, 23 more than the share of the telephone group is worth today, for 100% of the capital.
From that moment on, however, around the match for the climb of the former Telecom a smokescreen fell, with Kkr plunged into a strange silence. For its part, the telephone group went ahead on the drafting of the plan that leads straight to the single publicly controlled network (with all probability Cassa Depositi e Prestiti, Tim shareholder 9.8% and parent of Open Fiber) and the merger between the Tim’s secondary network with the already state-owned one in Open Fiber’s belly.
But these weren’t easy days for Tim. The day after, last March 2, the plan and the green light of the board to the disastrous 2021 accounts, closed with a loss of 8.7 billion and write-downs of 4.1 and the foreseeable cancellation of the dividend, the title of the former monopolist and literally precipitated, until it lost 17.9% in a few hours, at 24 cents per share, leaving 30% on the ground in two sessions. After days in the deep red, partially mitigated by the reassurances of Labriola himself, the stock has revived up to peaks of 10.8% at 26 cents. But today, after a good start, Tim turned red again, losing 2.2%.
A heart-pounding that denotes the spasmodic wait for the board convened in the early afternoon of this Sunday. On the shareholders’ table, needless to say, the offer of Kkr, for which the essential condition would be the delisting of the telephone company, or the withdrawal of the stock from the stock exchange. From environments close to the group, the willingness to try to close the circle and give some form of response to Kkr already on Sunday, also and not only to provide the market, eager for certainties, an indication on the continuation or not of the dossier .
On the other hand, as the former Telecom itself implied in the note downstream of the industrial plan, last week, the work of the ad hoc committee led by president Salvatore Rossi, has basically finished its job, that is the evaluation in the smallest details of the American offer.
“The financial and legal advisors of the board of directors have received all the relevant and necessary elements to evaluate Kkr’s indicative and non-binding expression of interest. This analysis will be concluded quickly. Once completed, the board will meet to evaluate the determinations of competence and decide the next steps in this regard “. Whatever happens on Sunday, we must always remember that Kkr already has a foot in Tim, being a 37.5% shareholder of Fibercop, the box that contains precisely that secondary network destined, perhaps, to merge with the fiber of Open Fiber.
