Financially attractive, the sale of mobile phone towers or optical fiber networks asks competitive and strategic questions.
by
There are many hotel groups that do not hold the walls of their hotels, industrialists who have no factory … In recent years, depending on the example of other sectors of activity, telecom operators launched a vast movement of sale of all or part of their network infrastructure. In less than five years, the cumulative amount of disposals of mobile phone or optical fiber lines exceeds 90 billion euros in Europe, according to telecom analysts from the Credit Suisse bank. And this figure has not finished inflating.
Long reluctant, Orange ended up being convinced. After having sold in December 2019 a very small part of the pylons on which its mobile antennas in Spain are stowed, the French operator housed, in November 2021, its 26,000 French and Spanish rounds in a company called Totem. With the desire to open it to other operators and why not merge it with a competitor. “Totem is a major asset whose value creation potential is important,” explained Christel Heydemann, the new director general of Orange, during the presentation, on Tuesday, April 26, of the operator’s results for the first quarter.
On paper, partially or completely sell these infrastructure and then rent it to the new owner promises multiple financial advantages. This makes it possible to bring fresh money into the boxes and, in parallel, to shed out from the debt, often heavy, carried by this equipment. Logic therefore that the trend in telecoms was launched by operators in lack of cash.
Bouygues Telecom was the first French telecoms group to sell its pylons to the Spanish Cellnex in 2017. SFR (Altice) imitated it in 2018 with the American Fund KKR. Iliad was tempted in 2019. Since then, the operator of Xavier Niel has not stopped (a personal shareholder in the world): he sold the Tours of Iliad in Italy and used this ploy for Reduce the bill for the acquisition of the Polish operator Play in December 2020. “The one who has not sold his tricks today for an original”, has a business banker.
Another advantage: not very glamorous, these infrastructures are nevertheless very expensive, sometimes more than the operators themselves. Maintaining a telecoms pylon requires few charges and, depending on the duration of the lease signed with the operator so that he installs his mobile antennas, the owner is guaranteed to receive rent for ten or fifteen years. Same logic for optical fiber networks: the operator gives up the property and then pays rent to be able to borrow it. The investment funds love this profitability-security couple to the point of initiating astronomical sums to seize them. Put on sale very recently by Deutsche Telekom, Deutsche Funkturm, the equivalent of Totem for the German operator, could be worth more than 18 billion euros. A record in Europe.
You have 48.76% of this article to read. The continuation is reserved for subscribers.