Spanish infrastructure group Abertis is moving ahead with plans to float its tower spinoff Cellnex Telecom on the Spanish stock exchanges.
Abertis, which first announced its IPO ambitions last October, will offer a 55% stake in the tower unit to…
Spanish infrastructure group Abertis is moving ahead with plans to float its tower spinoff Cellnex Telecom on the Spanish stock exchanges.
Abertis, which first announced its IPO ambitions last October, will offer a 55% stake in the tower unit to institutional investors, with an up to 10% greenshoe option.
Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and CaixaBank are acting as joint global coordinators on the offering. Banco Santander, BNP Paribas, Citigroup and Societe Generale are serving as joint bookrunners. BBVA and BTG Pactual are co-lead managers.
Following the IPO, the company will not be allowed to issue or dispose of any interest in Cellnex’s ordinary shares for a 180-day lock-up period, without the consent of the joint global coordinators, subject to customary exceptions.
The announcement follows Abertis’ €693m (US$774.29m) acquisition of 7,377 telecom towers from Italian mobile operator Wind Telecomunicazioni in early March.
As part of the deal, Cellnex bought a 90% stake in Wind’s tower spinoff Galata, while the Vimpelcom-owned carrier retained a 10% interest.
Commenting on the IPO plans, Abertis VP and CEO Francisco Reynés said: “As the recent agreement with Wind in Italy has demonstrated, the market dynamics for an independent infrastructure operator in the European telecoms sector are very favourable and Cellnex Telecom is well placed to capitalise on them.”
Barcelona-based Cellnex Telecom owns and operates a total portfolio of 15,170 sites, of which 7,472 are located in Spain and 7,698 in Italy.
The company posted €436m in annual revenues with a €178m EBITDA.
