The first thing that should be said about Ana Botin is that only a few weeks after taking over the reins of Santander in September 2014, she left no-one in doubt that she planned to put that house in order and take the bank’s problems seriously. After a wave of restructuring, including lay-offs and bank closures, things have turned nasty again for Santander in the first half of this year, with Brexit and Brazil key complications.
Banco Santander has delivered €4.606 BN in attributable profits for the first nine months of 2016, down 22.5% from the same period in 2015 due to the impact of extraordinary items announced in Q2 of this year and Q2 of 2015. Excluding extraordinary items and exchange rate movements, profits grew by 8% year on year to €4.975 BN.
José Benito de Vega | Gas Natural’s shares have been volatile in the last few months due to results which were worse than analysts’ consensus, coupled with a strategic plan which disappointed the market. But the stock price has recovered in the last two months and has outperformed the Ibex 35 index by 7.6% so far this year.
Ferrovial, which owns 25% of Heathrow, could benefit from the possible extension of the airport’s installations: apart from being able to participate in the construction of a third runway, the increase in the number of passengers would mean higher revenues, profits and dividends for the Spanish services and infrastructure operator.
After a long wait, as a result of Banco Portugués de Inversiones (BPI) shareholders’ voting restrictions and after improving its initial offer, CaixaBank is on the verge of gaining control of the Portuguese lender.
It’s definitely not Telefónica finest hour. Problems with the possible listing of its UK affiliate O2 after the pound’s slump can be added to the fiasco with the IPO of its infrastructure subsidiary Telxius. The company is worried about having its rating cut and it doesn’t know how it can cut its massive 52 billion euros debt pile. But on Monday it returned to the debt market and successfully placed 2 billion euros in 4-year and 15-year bonds.
José A. Santos (Patrivalor) | The stock market value of the 60 Spanish companies analysed totalled 557.375 billion euros at end-September 2016, down 5.5% from end-2015.
UBS | Santander updated the main targets of its 15-18E business plan. The new 11% Group ROTE18E figure (previous 13%) is largely aligned with our existing forecasts, to which we make modest changes.
The Gallegan fashion retailer never fails to amaze us with its growth capacity, which is also healthy. As of now, it is not just the leading Spanish company in stock market terms but also one of the three or four in the Eurostoxx 50 worth over 100 billion euros.
The Eurozone’s second largest lender confirms plans to increase Earnings Per Share (EPS) in 2016 and 2017, reaching double digits by 2018, and grow Dividend Per Share (DPS) and Tangible Net Asset Value (TNAV) Per Share every year.