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German incumbent reportedly brings in advisors as it seeks to monetise infrastructure assets.
Deutsche Telekom is mulling a possible spinoff or IPO of its infrastructure assets, including its mobile phone towers, it emerged this week.
Unnamed sources cited by Bloomberg on Thursday claimed that the German incumbent has hired advisors to help it consider its options. An initial public offering of its infrastructure could raise billions, the sources said.
Indeed, Deutsche Telekom’s CFO Thomas Dennenfeldt admitted during his company’s fourth-quarter results call that the telco is looking into it.
"It’s something we are investigating," he said. "We have something like 40,000 cell sites in our European properties…so that’s obviously an interesting area."
However, Bloomberg’s sources on Thursday said that the deliberations at an early stage and that no final decisions have been taken.
"Deutsche Telekom is aware of what some of our competitors are doing in this respect, and we are considering what could make sense for us and what not," said a Deutsche Telekom spokesman, in the report.
Those competitors include Spain’s Telefonica, which in February formed a new subsidiary called Telxius, which has been tasked with better monetising its global infrastructure.
In addition, Telecom Italia last year raised €875.3 million from the IPO of its towers business INWIT.
The Italian incumbent aims to reduce its stake in INWIT, and has attracted interest from a consortium comprising Spain’s Cellnex and Italian infrastructure fund F2i, as well as El Towers and American Tower.
Reuters reported last week that Cellnex-F2i are preparing a bid that would value INWIT at €3 billion.
