Spanish towerco Cellnex Telecom is eyeing expansion to new markets including France, Germany and the UK, said CEO Tobías Martínez.
Spanish towerco Cellnex Telecom (BME:CLNX) is eyeing expansion to new markets including France, Germany and the UK, said CEO Tobías Martínez (pictured).
Speaking during the company’s FY 2015 results, he was cited saying: “The company does not rule out shopping, especially in France, Germany and the UK, if any opportunity arises, but none is pending”.
The company, spun out from Abertis Infraestructuras (BME:ABE), li
Since then, the towerco has been linked to interest in Telecom Italia’s (BIT:TIT) rem
Elsewhere in Europe, an increasing interest in monetising tower assets – thanks in great part to the success of Inwit – is expected to drive tower deals.
“Inwit highlighted that these assets can be highly valued, so operators are thinking hard about whether they want to own this infrastructure – they’re looking at spin-offs, IPOs, part-sales and full sales. Interested parties will include infrastructure funds, European players such as TDF and Cellnex, and experienced investors,” one banker active in the space told TelecomFinance.
France and Germany both witnessed small tower deals in 2012, when Bouygues Telecom sold towers to Antin Infrastructure for €205m (US$226m) and KPN’s (AMS:KPN) EPlus sold towers to American Tower (NYSE:AMT) for €393m (US$433m). Infrastructure group TDF, excluding its German activities, was sold in March 2015 to investors including Arcus Infrastructure.
The UK and France, for their part, are already home to network sharing deals, which have proved the benefits of pooling infrastructure resources.
Cellnex closed 2015 with an EBITDA of €235m (US$259m) on revenue of €613m (US$676m). It issued a €600m (US$661m) bond in July 2015, and has net debt of €928m (US$1.02bn).