American Tower has agreed to buy more than 4,800 towers in Nigeria from India-based telecoms group Bharti Airtel, according to a joint statement.
The US towerco said in a separate regulatory filing that it will pay approximately US$1.05bn for the…
American Tower has agreed to buy more than 4,800 towers in Nigeria from India-based telecoms group Bharti Airtel, according to a joint statement.
The US towerco said in a separate regulatory filing that it will pay approximately US$1.05bn for the sites.
The transaction, which will enable Airtel to cut debt and reduce its ongoing capex on passive infrastructure in the country, is the latest in a string of sales conducted by the Indian company across the African continent.
In early September, Airtel sold over 3,500 sites to Eaton Towers in six African countries and, a couple of months before that, offloaded 3,100 towers to Helios in four nations.
Each time, the companies kept quiet on the price tag but previous estimates valued Bharti’s 15,000 African tower portfolio at up to US$2bn.
Under the deal agreed today with American Tower, Airtel Nigeria, the country’s second-largest mobile operator, will still have access to the towers as the anchor tenant under a 10-year lease agreement.
With this transaction, American Tower expands its footprint in Africa beyond Ghana, South Africa and Uganda.
“We expect this investment to support our long-term objective of generating double digit AFFO per share growth for our stockholders,” American Tower CEO Jim Taiclet said.
In Nigeria, the towerco will compete with IHS, which is expected to manage more than 15,000 sites in the country once two recently-agreed deals close.
Most of American Tower’s operations are currently on the American continent. Late last week, the US company confirmed it would buy over 6,000 towers from Telecom Italia’s TIM Brasil in a R$3bn (US$1.2bn) deal.
