Italy’s Wind has sold the majority of its telecom towers business to Cellnex Telecom for €693 million.
Barcelona-based Abertis, which adopted the name Cellnex Telecom for its terrestrial telecoms unit on Tuesday, agreed to buy 7,377 towers from Wind earlier this month. Cellnex Telecom will officially come into being from 1 April.
Under the terms of the deal, which has now completed, Cellnex will take a 90% stake in Galata Company, owner of Wind’s towers. Wind will retain a 10% stake.
The agreement enables Wind to use the towers for 15 years, with the possibility of extending the deal for a further 15 years. It also allows for the deployment of new sites that will be accessible to Wind.
"Following this acquisition, the Abertis subsidiary will have a portfoli o of more than 15,000 towers, including the 7,700 mobile telephone towers in Italy; and 4,600 mobile telephone towers and 3,400 towers allocated for audiovisual broadcasting in Spain," Cellnex said in a statement on Thursday.
Last year Abertis announced that it is looking at the possibility of listing its towers business. Subject to market conditions, it could float Cellnex in the first half of this year.
The business bought from Wind will generate around €200 million in revenues in its first full year of operations, Cellnex said, thereby raising its new parent’s turnover by 40%. As a result, close to 50% of Cellnex’ revenue will come from the mobile infrastructure space, and 35% of its topline will be generated outside of Spain.
