The president of Criteria Caixa and the La Caixa Foundation, Isidro Fainé, has sold 20,000 Telefónica shares for 73,600 euros, according to the records of the National Securities Market Commission (CNMV) and reported by Europa Press.
The manager, who is also vice president of the board of directors of Telefónica, has disposed of a total of 20,000 company securities at a unit price of 3.68 euros per share in a movement that took place this Thursday, December 14, but it has been notified by the CNMV this Friday.
The 3.68 euros at which Fainé sold Telefónica shares are above the 3.62 euros (-1.55%) at which the company’s trading closed on Friday’s trading day.
The shares of the operator chaired by José María Álvarez-Pallete lost last Tuesday the level of 4 euros that they had recovered on December 1.
In this sense, the company paid 862.5 million euros in dividends on December 14 (0.15 euros per share) and, in addition, Telefónica’s shares were affected this week by the agreement reached by Digi with Orange and MásMóvil to facilitate the merger of these last two companies.
Specifically, the Romanian operator has purchased 60 megahertz (MHz) of radio spectrum from MásMóvil, while at the same time it has closed a wholesale agreement option with Orange under advantageous conditions.
Although Digi’s agreement with Orange and MásMóvil is subject to the European Commission approving the merger – the provisional deadline to make the decision is February 15, 2024 -, this move may represent a threat to the wholesale business. that Telefónica has with Digi until 2026 and that represents, according to different analysts, income of around 300 million euros annually for the Spanish ‘teleco’.
Telefónica, which on November 8 celebrated its ‘Investor’s Day’ and presented its new strategic plan 2023-2026, is currently negotiating an employment regulation file in its three main subsidiaries in Spain (Telefónica de España, Móviles and Solutions), for which it has raised a “functional surplus” of staff of 3,959 workers (initially there were 5,124).
In parallel, the company is also negotiating with the unions the new collective agreement for related companies. Both negotiations are related to each other – although the dialogues to close the conditions of each one are independent – and must be resolved at the beginning of January.
So far this year, Criteria Caixa has invested a total of 77.92 million euros in the acquisition of 20.93 million shares of the operator, according to CNMV records.
Specifically, the share package that the entity chaired by Isidro Fainé has acquired so far this year is equivalent to 0.363% of the total number of company securities.
As of November 30, 2023, Criteria Caixa’s shareholding in Telefónica stood at 2.53%, according to the holding company’s website.
