This year’s Global 100 report showed more than ever the extent to which operators are willing to travel in order to seek out new revenue opportunities.
AT&T, the perennial leader of the revenue ranking table, spent over $50 billion on big acquisitions between January and July, snapping up Iusacell and Nextel in Mexico and DirecTV in the US. And America Movil held on to ninth position this year in no small part thanks to the consolidation of Telekom Austria in its results.
In-market expansion is also having an impact. Vodafone rose to seventh place on the back of recent acquisitions in key European markets, while Hong Kong’s Hutchison looks set to improve its position in the table in future years, if it can secure regulatory approval for its UK deal.
Demonstrating how adventuring overseas can have a lasting effect, this year we declared Japan’s Softbank to be star performer at the top of the Global 100, since it rose two places to number five, continuing the momentum it gained after its 2013 Sprint buy.
But position in the Global 100 comes down to a lot more than frenzied M&A activity. Overseas travel involves currency conversion, and the euro exchange rate proved problematic for some operators this year, whether or not they had ventured far from home.
Russian operators were hit hard by the depreciation of the rouble, telcos in the Nordics discovered their revenues bought them fewer euros than in previous years, and Telefonica wrestled with currency issues in Latin America.
Finally, China Mobile breaking into the top three and leading the market cap table for the second year running shows that geographic growth is not the be all and end all; it still generates the bulk of its revenues at home.
So, if there is a lesson to be drawn from the 2015 Global 100 it is this: spending heavily on M&A will not guarantee an operator a place at the top end of the table, but it definitely helps.
