Telcos with a clear focus on what they are trying to achieve will do better at the risky business of M&A. So who’s buying what, and who’s doing well?

Introduction

Business beyond connectivity – this is the mantra of STL Partners’ vision of the future for telecoms operators, outlined in the recent revamp of our Telco 2.0 vision. Telcos are at a crossroads where they must determine where their businesses will fit into a world of disruptive, fast-moving technologies and uncertain futures.

This means that it is more important than ever to re-evaluate the tools available to telcos to generate growth, expand their business competencies and provide new service offerings outside the core.

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Traditionally, a key telco growth strategy has been to use mergers and acquisitions, particularly of (and with) other telcos, to build scale geographically and in core communications services. However, as operators strive to become more relevant in a changing business landscape, there has been a growing volume of investment in what might be termed ‘digital’ business – business services that leverage technology to build new capabilities and deliver new customer services, experiences and relationships. We distinguish between these two kinds of telecoms M&A as follows:

• Traditional M&A – “Operators buying operators”
  • Traditional M&A is focused around traditional telecoms M&A where operators buy other operators to expand in new markets or consolidate existing markets.
• Digital M&A – “Operators investing outside core”
  • Digital M&A refers to non-operator M&A, or all other purchases that telcos make to expand beyond their core connectivity services. Most often this includes investments in software capabilities or industry verticals.

This report examines the landscape of digital M&A from H2 2017 to H1 2018, highlights trends across previous time periods, and outlines strategies for and case studies of digital M&A to illustrate ways that telcos can utilise it in a focused and strategic manner to create long-term value and growth. It does not cover minority venture digital investments; however, these are tracked in our database and will be the subject of future analysis.

This report is the third iteration of STL Partners’ yearly digital M&A and investment report, which began in 2016 and was updated in 2017. It draws on data from our digital M&A tracker tool, which covers 23 operators over five regions from 2012 to H1 2018. A copy of the database is available with this report.

Previous editions of the telco M&A database

• Digital M&A and Investment Strategies – July 2017 update
• Digital M&A and Investment Strategies – 2016

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