América Móvil launched a bond issue on the stock markets for 2.1 billion euros, convertible into 672.4 million shares of the KPN trader within a three-year period, as of 2024. At this time, America Mobile will pay cash to bond buyers or deliver KPN shares. This maneuver by the Mexican group 6.4% threw away the value of the shares of KPN, an operator whose board was always reluctant to see AMX as the owner of the entire business.

There are reasons that encourage Mobile America (AMX) to evaluate its Koninklijke KPN withdrawal,beyond the frustration of not achieving the company's leadership in various attempts over ten years. This operator, in the past a state telephony monopoly in the Netherlands, fell by 14% of its market value on the Amsterdam Stock Exchange for the Covid-19 effects last year and at the start of March its stock was recovering to the January 2020 levels of EUR 2.7 per title. Versions of an absorption by swedish group EQT in the previous October hardly encouraged KPN's action to take off from 2.01 euros. The entire company then had a market capitalization of 9.4 billion euros.

Across the Atlantic, coto de América Móvil in telecommunications, Carlos Slim enlists his pocket to buy radio bands in Brazil,Mexicoand Peru for 5G coverages in processes that will compete Telefónica,Entel,Tigo,AT&Tor Wom for the best blocks since this year. In Colombia he will rethent how to build infrastructure that he is not forced to share, after his company was rated there as the incumbent of the sector.

Closer to KPN, but in Eastern Europe, subsidiary Telekom Austria adds value-added customers, grows its ARPU and improves its Ebitda margin, so Mobile America recently hired Ericsson to create the 5G heart of Telekom Austria's mobile networks, investments that could one day take its signal to Ukraine.

The company needs liquidity to expand 4G-LTE hedging and build 5G in the thirties of countries where it offers services; also for the split of its infrastructure arm to create a kind of Telesites LatinAmerica, and also to recover from investments by the Central American and Brazilian units of Telefónica and Nextel, respectively, in which it disbursed about $1.5 billion in the last financial year.

All of this has already encouraged her to sell her TracFone virtual mobile operation in the United StatesUnited to Verizon,to whom he contracted network capacity to sell its services. The Slim family sold TracFone Wireless for $6.25 billion in cash and Verizon shares, even with full control of that company that gave it 20.91 million users, revenues of more than $2 billion and a profit of $294 million. TracFone was the third most important business for Mobile America after Mexico and Brazil.

For Antonio Sandoval,an independent financial analyst, the kpn plan makes sense of the current telecommunications context in other Mobile American markets.

"I would rate it as a smooth outing or a potential exit from KPN's Mobile America, because AMX has already issued convertible bonds and if people buy them, eventually the company will return the investment with KPN shares. Why stay in a business with a partner who is uncomfortable. It's a very clever manoeuvre. The shares are convertible and usually if the investor buys a convertible bond from a certain company, it is on the condition that he will receive a share."

"It is highly likely that over time, as deadlines expire, Mobile America will deliver shares and become a partnership with KPN. They are thinking strategically about what is coming, as they are tying the times with auctions and deployments in Mexico or Brazil. It's your move to have the capital you need by 2024 to seamlessly finance all that infrastructure you need in other markets," analyst Antonio Sandoval said.

KPN, a Latin American's largest purchase in Europe

América Móvil tried since 2012 to buy all KPN. AMX already owned a third of the company and submitted a purchase offer of 7.2 billion euros for 70.23% of KPN's shares held by other hands. That, at that time, would have been the most important operation for a Latin American in telecommunications in Europe, territory of global operators such as Vodafone,Telefónica or Deutsche Telekom.

KPN's offer derived after América Móvil increased its shareholding at KPN from 24.9% to 28%, very close to 30% as a limit in the Netherlands for a shareholder and that would force it to think of an offer for the entire company. But since then the other leadership at KPN considered mobile America's offering "opportunistic" and rejected it, accusing it that it was below the real value of the company.

For Mobile America to enter KPN was its first outpost in Europe --it had already bought a quarter of Telekom Austria by that time--after failing in an attempt with Telecom Italia and having dabbled in virtually every major market in America except Canada and Venezuela, as then-President Hugo Chavez stopped the purchase of CANTV and then re-nationalized the company , after AMX submits a purchase offer for that operator's assets.

Analysts predicted that income as KPN's owner would give Mobile America access to a market of 40 million Europeans, Dutch and Belgians, and targeting potential partnerships and investments in Germany, the continent's largest telecommunications market.

In the attempt to buy KPN, the Slims found that Telefónica launched an offer by KPN's German division, known in those days as E-Plus, which would later become O2 and now one of the four most profitable businesses for the Spanish company.

Both groups agreed that América Móvil, KPN's top shareholder for its 29.7% owned by this operator, would support Telefónica's offer for E-plus, in exchange for Telefónicadeliver 20.5% of Telefónica Deutschland's shares to KPN. The pact then paved the purchase of KPN by AMX. To tie up the sale, businessman Carlos Slim also promised to maintain KPN's trademark and to list the company's shares on the Amsterdam Stock Exchange, more not in Mexico or New York.

In October 2013, América Móvil withdrew its offer by KPN for the "obstruction" of a foundation representing minority shareholders and which by then acquired 50% of KPN's shares. América Móvil, the tenth largest company in its sector for its 290 million mobile consumers by the end of 2020, had lost its bet on KPN.

KPN also suffers from covid

A number of expenses and contingencies, coupled with the adverse effects of Covid-19, hit KPN's revenue in the 2020 financial year. The company reported a profit of 561 million euros, 8.7% less than in 2019. Throughout the year, its revenue fell 3.9%, to 5,275 million euros. His Ebitda, measured in cash, remained flat between 2019 and 2020: at 2,320 million euros. But KPN's debt increased by 184 million euros, to the end of the year by 5,332 million euros.

As far as KPN and Telekom Austria's businesses can be comparable on paper, KPN and Telekom Austria grew by almost all criteria during 2020. América Móvil today owns 51% of Telekom Austria, from the 21% it originally bought in 2012.

As a sample, A1, a trademark of Telekom Austria and Mobile America in eight Eastern European nations, grew 5.1% of its postpaid customer base and the brand reached a total of 21.9 million mobile users. In terms of revenue, AI entered 1,186 million euros and its Ebitda margin improved from 29.6% to 30.7%.

"In the central and eastern European markets, income-generating units increased thanks to broadband and pay-TV units (...) The group's Ebitda increased by 2.5% thanks to operational efficiencies. Adjusting for non-recurring and restructuring effects, Ebitda would have grown 5.0% at constant exchange rates," Mobile America said of that operation in its latest financial report to the Mexican Stock Exchange (BMV).

AMX signals about KPN

It could be that Mobile America has been sliding its exit from KPN. On September 10, 2020, Carlos García Moreno Elizondo, a trusted man in the Slim family, resigned as a member of KPN's supervisory board. America Mobile has the right to appoint one of the members of this directory.

García Moreno Elizondo was held by Argentina'sAlejandro Plater, a former Ericsson executive, from Telekom Austria. Plater will be in office until 2025, one year after the bonus placement plan is completed.

The clearest sign about KPN came from the head of Mobile America itself. At a conference with financial analysts, the company's director, Daniel Hajj, denied the company's interest in expanding at KPN:

"At KPN what we're doing is just an investment (...) We are not interested in buying the company."

• America Movil SAB de CV