The courts have delayed an expected ruling concerning the validity of Poland's 2005 tender for new UMTS frequencies upon the request of the tender winner, P4, to give it time to familiarize itself with the case. No further date for the proceedings was given.
At the end of August the telecom regulator, UKE, informed that the concession entitling P4 to launch UMTS services might be cancelled on procedural grounds. However, the annulment of the earlier decision does not mean that P4 will not be able to receive the concession again.
Our view:
We expect marginal negative trading impact on Netia as resolution over the validity of P4's license gets delayed. However, we believe that a bigger driver of Netia's shareprice at present continues to be M&A speculation, to which we attach a low probability. We maintain our Sell rating.