Deutsche Telekom: Record Viewership Figures and a Rating Upgrade Can't Lift the Stock From Its Summer Slump
Veröffentlicht: 28.06.2026 um 12:06 Uhr, Redaktion boerse-global.de
Deutsche Telekom’s World Cup coverage is breaking records, its first-quarter results beat expectations, and Fitch just raised its credit rating. Yet the stock is trading within a whisker of a 52-week low and has shed nearly 15% over the past twelve months. The gap between operational excellence and market sentiment has rarely been wider.
MagentaTV drew more than 36 million viewers in the opening week of the FIFA World Cup – a historic high that more than doubled the audience for the 2024 European Championship in Germany. The France-Senegal match peaked at 6.5 million viewers, a new platform record, and data throughput on the Telekom network hit 2,700 gigabits per second. For MagentaTV itself, throughput soared to 14,700 Gbps, also an all-time high. The operator is streaming all 104 matches, 44 of them exclusively, and the knock-out rounds will add six round-of-16 ties, three quarter-finals and two semi-finals that only MagentaTV carries.
But none of that is translating into share price resilience. The stock closed Friday at €26.31, just 2.3% above its 52-week low of €25.71. The relative strength index stands at 34, firmly in oversold territory. One clear reason: the second tranche of the company’s buyback programme expires on 30 June. Since April, Telekom has repurchased roughly 17 million own shares, including 1.65 million last week alone, with the tranche capped at €550 million. The overall 2026 buyback plan runs to €2 billion, but no start date for the next tranche has been announced. For now, a regular buyer is stepping off the floor.
Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying Deutsche Telekom?
The bigger overhang is the merger talk. Reports – unconfirmed by the company – suggest Deutsche Telekom is exploring a full merger with T-Mobile US via a holding structure that would pool shares of both entities, creating the world’s largest telecoms group by market value. Such a deal would set a record for public M&A. But the political hurdles are steep. The German government and KfW together hold roughly 28% of Deutsche Telekom. A merger could dilute that stake to an estimated 17–18%, well below the 25% threshold that Berlin has historically treated as a strategic floor. Berlin’s blessing is far from assured.
Under the hood, the business looks solid. First-quarter revenue rose 4.7% organically to €29.9 billion, and adjusted EBITDA AL climbed 7.5% to €11.5 billion. Management responded by lifting full-year guidance: adjusted EBITDA AL is now expected to land at around €47.5 billion, free cashflow AL north of €19.8 billion, and adjusted earnings per share at approximately €2.20. Fitch Ratings upgraded Deutsche Telekom from BBB+ to A-, citing the strong market position and robust cash generation from T-Mobile US. The agency sees net leverage near 2.0 times EBITDA.
On the network side, Deutsche Telekom leads Germany’s 5G rollout with 89.1% geographic coverage – roughly 13 percentage points ahead of Vodafone and Telefónica. It holds the top spot in more than 80% of districts. Fibre investment is running at €30 billion through 2030, with an additional €800 million earmarked for the next three years. The target for 2026 is to connect 2.5 million new households. Crucially, the company is shifting its focus from making fibre available to actually winning subscribers – a metric that will matter more going forward.
The next hard catalyst is 6 August, when the second-quarter numbers are due. By then the World Cup knock-out rounds will have delivered their full audience boost, and the buyback pause will have been in place for over a month. Until that date, and until there is clarity on the T-Mobile US merger, the market appears content to keep the stock pinned near its lows – regardless of how many records MagentaTV sets.
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