Incumbent Telefonica is to list 51 per cent of the shares in its call centre subsidiary Atento on 13 June. The book-building period started on 27 May, according to a stock exchange announcement. The 30,600,000 ordinary shares will be offered in a single…
Incumbent Telefonica is to list 51 per cent of the shares in its call centre subsidiary Atento on 13 June. The book-building period started on 27 May, according to a stock exchange announcement. The 30,600,000 ordinary shares will be offered in a single global tranche to qualified national and international institutional investors. Telefonica added that it had granted managers a green-shoe option to purchase up to 3,060,000 additional shares, or 5.1 per cent of outstanding shares.
The company has agreed an indicative and non-binding offering price range of E19.25 to E25 per share, and expects to set a definitive offering price on June 9.
The price range would value the company at E1.15bn-E1.5bn. The sale will be jointly coordinated by Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, with Banco Santander, BNP Paribas, JPMorgan and BBVA set to be bookrunners.
The sale reflects Telefonica’s increasing focus on its operations in Latin America, as state austerity measures and a slowing economy continue to weigh it down at home. Domestic workforce is expected to be cut by around a fifth over the next three years to concentrate resources on Latin America. It has also been trying to list a portion of Atento for some time.
A planned flotation of a 20 per cent stake in the group was called off in 2008 because of a difficult economic climate. At the time, the stake had been valued at around E300m.
The mobile units of France Telecom and Sweden’s TeliaSonera have won spectrum licences in the 900MHz and 1800MHz bands.
Orange and Yoigo were the only two bidders in an auction concluded on May 23, despite earlier reported interest from cablecos ONO, Euskaltel, R and Telecable, as well as telco Jazztel. Jazztel CEO Jose Miguel Garcia was subsequently quoted claiming his group could still consider joining later tenders for mobile spectrum. Orange promised to invest E433m in its network, while Yoigo promised E300m, both figures higher than the E186m minimum.
The new licence will allow Orange to expand its broadband operations, and because 900MHz has a considerable reach in rural areas, it will be able to expand services without building new antennae. It also brings better coverage inside large buildings in the bigger cities. Yoigo’s main advantage with its new 1,800MHz licence will be the ability to offer cheaper phones using GSM rather than 3G-compatible technology, and thus move more aggressively in the prepaid market. Leading cellcos Telefonica and UKbased Vodafone were barred from entering the auction, and have had to return spectrum because of government attempts to give new entrants a fair slice of spectrum.
