Posted By Jessica Weisman-Pitts
Posted on November 15, 2024
By John Revill
ZURICH (Reuters) – Sunrise shares rose on their return to the Swiss stock exchange on Friday, giving the telecoms company a market value of about 3.3 billion Swiss francs ($3.7 billion) following its spin-off from Liberty Global.
At 0835 GMT, the stock was up around 5% at 46.51 francs. The shares will be included on the Swiss Performance Index family from Nov. 22.
Sunrise, which competes with government-controlled Swisscom and privately-held broadband, TV and mobile provider Salt, was listed from 2015 until 2021 when it was bought by Liberty Global for 6.8 billion francs.
Since then, the company has grown rapidly, increasing its annual revenue to 3 billion francs in 2023, and is the second biggest player in the 8.1 billion franc Swiss telecoms market after Swisscom.
“Sunrise is primed for growth and cash returns, and we expect an attractive progressive dividend policy,” Sunrise CEO Andre Krause said in a statement.
The company said it expected to pay a dividend of at least 240 million francs in 2025 for its 2024 financial year.
Nearly 69 million class A shares and 26 million class B shares have been distributed to shareholders according to their stake in Liberty Global.
Only A shares will be traded, although the B shares – which have one tenth of the economic entitlement – can be converted into A stock. Both classes of shares hold one vote.
($1 = 0.8893 Swiss francs)
(Reporting by John Revill. Additional reporting by Linda Pasquini. Editing by Friederike Heine and Mark Potter)
