A tale of two continents The equity story for Telenor was centred on a solid footing in its Nordic footprint attached to the optionality of faster growth in in both developed and developing Asia. The Norwegian business continues to show relative strength despite the impact of Covid, boosted by underlying upsell in new fixed, mobile data and pushing ARPU from adjacent services and unlimited data. At the same time dtac and Digi both downgraded guidance due to the impact of the pandemic on the tourist and migrant worker segments, whilst the remaining EM markets also remained sluggish. More than 75% of the NOK1.3bn impact of Covid-19 on EBITDA YTD has been in Asia. Reversing the trends in Asia is key to driving solid EBITDA growth and achieving mid-term guidance. What do we know today that we didn''t know pre-results? New fixed continues to offset fixed legacy declines in Norway, this has continued to surprise consensus. At the same time the company also achieved significant opex reduction enabling it to optically increase guidance for the year on EBITDA. Management also commented on the prospects for consolidation in Sweden, with the belief that you will not know what the regulatory authorities will accept till at least you ask them - they are willing to talk to anyone that is a seller. The Swedish business remains troubled overall, despite KPI momentum as Telenor continues to suffer from over-indexing to B2B relative to its peers. Has the investment case changed? Not really We believe the current share price discounts much of the growth prospects in Asia due to investors staying away from EM exposure during Covid, meanwhile the Norwegian core remains strong with solid, if not spectacular growth from DNA in Finland. The company also has MandA optionality from Asia (and locally in Sweden/Denmark), with the Head of Asia tasked with looking for consolidation opportunities, we believe a deal is possible in the next 12mths. Changes to estimates -...