Spain is above the global average in its ability to attract long-stay tourism (i.e., more than a week). This type of tourist accounts for half of the national offer, with long-stay trips considered “more satisfactory” than short-stay trips. This is reflected in the ‘Study on the positioning of Spain as a tourist destination’ recently presented by the Real Instituto Elcano and Turespaña.
Amazon will charge from April all companies that sell their products in Spain, including more than 9,000 Spanish SMEs, the recently launched “Google tax.” This will be a burden for the big technology companies of 3% of their revenues from their digital services in the country. In other words, if a company sells a product for €100 through Amazon, and the reference price is 15%, the platform would apply 3% to that 15%, thus charging 0.45% more, i.e. 15.45%.
Fernando Rodríguez | Spanish issuers are becoming increasingly active in the global sustainable finance market. State-owned Instituto de Crédito Oficial (ICO) has joined the Nasdaq Sustainable Bond Network (NSBN), the platform that concentrates relevant information on sustainable bond issuers and transactions from all over the world with the aim of promoting transparency in this market. Iberdrola became the first issuer to join this platform in October last year, and BBVA was the first Spanish bank to do so a month later.
The Spanish economy fell by 11% in 2020 as a result of pandemic’s impact on activity, an unprecedented slump in peacetime. It is also the largest annual contraction since statistical data has been recorded, thus ending six consecutive years of growth, according to the National Institute of Statistics (INE). The fall of the economy in 2020 is slightly below that forecast by the Government (11.2%).
Last Tuesday, Spain’s government held the long-awaited auction of 3,034 MW of new renewable licenses with a high level of participation. A total of 84 companies made bids, reaching 9,700 MW, which is three times the power offered. The megawatts allocated were distributed amongst 32 business groups. By technology, 2,036MW were awarded in solar photovoltaic and 998 MW in wind. Meanwhile, the weighted average price was 24.47 €/MWh for solar PV and 25.31 €/MWh for wind.
The Spanish tourism sector has suffered a dramatic drop in activity of around 70% in 2020 due to the coronavirus crisis. . The last available data, the overnight stays in hotel establishments, confirm just that. They fell by 73.3% in 2020 to 91.6 million, while room rates fell by an average of 6%. So the industry’s recovery depends, partly, on the receipt of European funds. And 70 tourism companies have proposed a project to the government to attract €5.8 billion in European aid.
Telefónica and Liberty Global reached an agreement in early May last year to merge their UK businesses and create the market-leading fixed and mobile operator in the country. According to the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), the combination of Telefónica subsidiary and Virgin could lead to higher prices for wholesale fiber and mobile services. Thus they announced an investigation into the merger and its possible consequences before giving the go-ahead to the deal.
The International Monetary Fund updated its estimates on Tuesday, attributing a GDP growth for Spain of 5.9% in 2021, down from 7.2% in its October projection. This is a significant difference with respect to the 9.8% forecast of the Spanish government, on which the Budget approved last December is based. In fact, the macroeconomic accounts presented in October by Pedro Sánchez pointed to projections of an inertial expansion of -11.2% on a yearly basis in 2020 and +7.2% for 2021 (+9.8% including the Recovery Plan).
Chinese investment in Spain increased in 2020 – amid the pandemic and in a context of a general decline in Chinese investor appetite in Europe – reaching 370 million dollars. This represents an increase of 362% compared to the modest 80 million dollars of investment in 2019, according to the study published by Baker McKenzie. The data related to Chinese companies’ investment in Spain during 2020 is mainly driven by China Railway’s takeover of a stake in Aldesa, valued at $277 million.
Global InfraCo, owned by Australian fund IFM Global Infrastructure, has announced a voluntary and partial tender offer for up to 220 million shares in Spanish energy company Naturgy, representing 22.69% of the firm’s share capital. The offer price is €23 per share, which is a premium of 28.9% over the volume weighted average price of Naturgy shares for the last six months and 19.7% over Naturgy’s share price at yesterday close. For Bankinter’s analysis team, the offer is “attractive for minority shareholders”.