Telefónica
Telefónica, S.A. is a Spanish multinational telecommunications company. It has headquarters as well as a registered office in Madrid, Spain. It is one of the largest telephone operators and mobile network providers in the world. It provides fixed and mobile telephony, broadband, and subscription television, operating in Europe and the Americas.
Along with its Telefónica brand, it also trades as Movistar, O2, and Vivo. The company is a component of the Euro Stoxx 50 stock market index. On 15 April 2012, Telefónica shut down TVA and Ajacto, which unified the brand into Vivo.
History
The company was created in Madrid in 1924, as Compañía Telefónica Nacional de España , with ITT among its major shareholders. In 1945, the state acquired by law a share of 79.6% of the company, later diluted by a capital increase in 1967.Until the liberalization of the telecom market in 1997, Telefónica was the only telephone operator in Spain, where it retained a dominant position. Telefónica is present in 12 countries in Latin America and Europe, as of January 2024.
Ownership
Telefónica is a publicly listed company with more than 1.5 million direct shareholders. At the end of 2025 its share capital comprised 5,670,161,554 ordinary shares traded on the Spanish Stock Market and on those in London, New York, Lima, and Buenos Aires.Telefónica is a national defence service provider in Spain, where the government has a regulatory role in its M&A, including shareholders.
In September 2023, Saudi Arabia's telecom, STC Group, became Telefónica's largest shareholder, with a 9.9% holding, increasing its stake to €2.1 billion, through shares and convertible financial instruments. Announced in December 2023, the Spanish government subsequently acquired a 10% stake in Telefónica, valued at $2.2 billion, in May 2024, to offset the telecom's Saudi ownership stake, through state holding company SEPI.
Stockholders of 5% or more ownership in the company, as at August 13, 2025, are:
- Government of Spain : 10%
- CaixaBank: 9.99%
- STC Group: 9.969%
- Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria : 5.007%
Operations
Europe
Austria
In May 2022, Telefónica announced the acquisition of the European cloud-based services specialist and cloud Microsoft Dynamics partner BE-terna. The deal worth €350 million includes 1,000 staff, AI, extended service capabilities across Europe, and a cybersecurity services division. The deal aimed to see Telefónica increase its geographic scale and aid its digital capabilities.Spain
Telefónica is the second largest corporation in Spain, behind the Santander Group. It operates under the movistar and O2 brands with the first being the largest broadband and phone provider in Spain.Telefónica's FTTH network in Spain is the most extensive fibre-to-home network in Europe, as of April 2016, and the shutdown plan for the legacy copper network is already in progress.
Germany
Telefónica was the parent of Telefónica Deutschland, which held two alternative IP carriers. The two ISPs, mediaWays and HighwayOne merged in January 2003 after having been purchased by Telefónica in 2001 and February 2002 respectively.On 26 January 2006, Telefónica completed its £17.7 billion acquisition of the UK-based operator O2 which also provided mobile phone services in Germany under the O2 brand. Following the purchase, Telefónica merged Telefónica Deutschland and O2 Germany to form the current business Telefónica Germany.
Telefónica Germany, purchased competitor E-Plus on 1 October 2014. As part of the purchase, Telefónica reduced its stake in its subsidiary to 62.1%. Integration continues as of August 2015, but the now merged network is Germany's largest in customers.
United Kingdom
On 31 October 2005, O2 agreed to be taken over by Telefónica, with a cash offer of £17.7 billion, or £2 per share. According to the merger announcement, O2, which provided mobile phone services in the UK, Ireland, Germany and the Isle of Man, retained its name and continued to be based in the United Kingdom, keeping both the brand and the management team. The merger became unconditional on 23 January 2006 and O2 became a wholly owned subsidiary of Telefónica. Manx Telecom was sold by Telefónica Europe in June 2010.In January 2015, Li Ka-shing entered into talks with Telefónica to buy O2 for around £10.25 billion, aiming to merge it with his subsidiary Three. The acquisition was officially blocked by the European Commission on 11 May 2016, which argued that the merger would reduce consumer choice and lead to a higher cost of services Telefónica began to seek a stock market flotation of the business instead.
Announced on 7 May 2020, Liberty Global owner of Virgin Media and Telefónica owner of O2, agreed to merge their U.K. businesses in a deal worth £31bn and form one of the UK's largest entertainment and telecommunication companies to rival the BT Group. As of the 1 June 2021, Virgin Media and O2 UK Ltd officially merged to form Virgin Media O2, giving Telefónica a 50% stake in the new company, with the other 50% owned by Liberty Global.
France
In France, since 2011, Telefónica has a joint venture with the French telecommunications company Bouygues Telecom, part of the Bouygues group, to offer global telecommunication services packages to multinational companies. This cooperation was expanded in June 2015 through the creation of a separate joint venture company named Telefónica Global Solutions France, with its own marketing and sales teams offering Telefónica and Bouygues Telecom services packages to corporations.Americas
Telefónica operates the Movistar mobile phone brand throughout Latin America and the Vivo in Brazil. In Mexico it occupies a distant second place and it is the largest in Chile, Venezuela, and Brazil. Telefónica plans to divest the majority of its Latin American business in order to focus on the core markets UK, Spain, Germany and Brazil and add €2 billion in revenue with this programme.Brazil
Telefónica's largest fixed-line operation in South America is in Brazil, where it provides broadband, local and long-distance telephone services in the aforementioned state, which alone represents the highest GDP of South America. It also owns a majority stake in the Brazilian mobile operator Vivo, having agreed on 28 July 2010 to buy Portugal Telecom's stake in the firm for €7.5 billion, after increasing its original offer by €1.8 billion over three months of incident-rich negotiations. The Telefónica group has been in the country since 1996 when it acquired CRT, a fixed-line and mobile operator in the southern part of the country. The landline division is currently part of Oi. In July 1998, acquired Telesp, the telephony operator of the Telebrás system in the state of São Paulo, forming Telefônica Brasil.In June 2009, after four big "blackouts" on Telefónica's broadband "Speedy", ANATEL ordered Telefónica to stop sales of its broadband service until improvements were made on the infrastructure to provide better-quality service. After the release of sales of broadband internet in August 2009, ANATEL expects the company's service investments to keep on par with the sales. On 24 July 2010, Telefónica announced that the number of Speedy subscribers had exceeded three million people.