The Mexican conglomerate Alfa has completed its acquisition of AT&T’s 49% stake in telco Alestra.
The terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Both Alfa and AT&T did not use any financial advisers. AT&T’s legal adviser was Thompson Knight.
The…
The Mexican conglomerate Alfa has completed its acquisition of AT&T’s 49% stake in telco Alestra.
The terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Both Alfa and AT&T did not use any financial advisers. AT&T’s legal adviser was Thompson Knight.
The acquisition has been approved by the Mexican regulatory authorities.
Alestra provides fixed-line voice and broadband services, mainly to business customers.
Alfa is a conglomerate with operations in several sectors, including petrochemicals, car components, refrigerated food and telecommunications.
EBITDA for the whole group in Q1 2011 was US$406m, an increase of 44% on the same period in 2010. It recorded EBITDA for Alestra of US$32m, an increase of 19% on Q1 2010.
In its original announcement of the deal in April, Alfa’s senior VP for development, Alejandro Elizondo, said that the acquisition would allow the company to strengthen its IP and telecoms strategy through an emphasis on new cloud computing technology for the Mexican enterprise market.
AT&T said that Mexico remained a critical market for the company.
It will continue providing services to multinational enterprise customers in Mexico through its subsidiary AT&T Global Network Services Mexico.
In June, Moody’s changed the outlook to negative on the ratings for Alestra and Alestra’s debt, which both currently have a B1 rating.
The credit rating agency said that the loss of AT&T’s business and support would have a negative impact on Alestra’s revenues, margins and cash flow, although it added that the impact was not significant enough to force a downgrade.
It forecast that most of the negative impact would come in 2012, when it predicted the company would post negative sales growth and “modest” free cash flow generation.
