America Movil spins off towers, merges Chilean unit

Over the past few years, operators have been striving to gain value from their infrastructure assets, especially mobile towers. Large-scale sales to increasingly interested private equity firms, as well as to neutral host giants like Cellnex, have filled the news over the past year, as operators offload their towers in favour of quick cash to pump into 5G and fibre rollouts.

 

Yet another strategy becoming commonplace has been spinning off the towers unit into a separate business, aiming to tap the strong investor appetite being seen around the world.

 

Now, America Movil have announced they will follow this strategy, with shareholders yesterday overwhelmingly approving the spin-off of the operators towers into a new unit called Sitio Latinoamerica.

 

Sitio Latinoamerica will owned around 36,000 towers throughout Latin America, including assets in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, and Uruguay.

 

The spin off should be fully complete by the end of the year.

 

In related news, America Movil announced earlier this week that they would combine their Chilean mobile unit with Liberty Latin America, a local fixed and broadcasting company. The 50:50 joint venture (JV) will create a vehicle to allow “significant investment” in both fibre and 5G. 

 

Combined, this new JV will have around 6.5 million mobile subscribers and 3 million fixed and broadcast customers. Synergies of $180 million are expected from the merger, with 80% of this total arriving in the first three years. 

 

America Movil’s towers were notably not included in this deal, meaning they too will form part of the new Sitio Latinoamerica’s infrastructure portfolio.

The merger is expected to close in the second half of 2022.