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As well as combining their towers, Deutsche Telekom and Cellnex will become anchor tenants in the newly-created Digital Infrastructure Vehicle (DIV) fund focused on European digital infrastructure
Today, Spanish infrastructure giant Cellnex is partnering with Deutsche Telekom (DT) to combine their tower assets in the Netherlands. The deal will see the 3,150 towers and rooftop sites from Deutsche Telekom’s Dutch tower business, T-Mobile Infra BV, combined with the 984 cell sites that Cellnex already operates in the country.
The combined combined entity will have around 4,134 sites, with a further 180 to be rolled out over the next seven years, making the new Cellnex Netherlands the largest tower operator in the country. Deutsche Telekom will retain access to the towers via a 15 years long-term provision contract which is automatically renewable for 10-year periods.
The partnership also includes the creation of the independently managed DIV, an investment fund focused on European digital infrastructure. The fund will hold a 38% stake in Cellnex Netherlands, receiving €200 million in capital from Cellnex and €400 from Deutsche Telekom.
Cellnex first entered the Dutch market in 2016 and hopes this new deal will help bolster their position as a key player in the region.
“Just as we did in Switzerland with Sunrise, we have built an alliance with Deutsche Telekom in the Netherlands which now allows us to consolidate our position as a key player in the Dutch market,” said Tobias Martinex, Cellnex’s CEO. “At the same time, since this agreement involves Cellnex gaining assets in exchange for equity in our local subsidiary, we are presenting to the market a new growth operation, one that preserves and protects our capacity to take on more projects by not consuming financial resources from the Group.”
2020 was an enormous year for Cellnex, which saw the Spanish giant rapidly expanding its European tower holdings. In February 2020, the company announced revenue of over €1 billion, later buying towers from Poland’s Play. Their largest purchase came towards the end of the year, buying up all of CK Hutchison’s European towers for around €9 billion in a deal that closed last week.
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