After buying most of French operator SFR from Vivendi in November, Altice is now back for the rest. The company, owned by billionaire Patrick Drahi, announced an offer to purchase Vivendi’s remaining 20% stake in the merged Numericable-SFR. Altice will pay 46 cents per share which amounts to about $4.4 billion.
The deal is subject to approval by Vivendi’s supervisory board. It’s expected to close following the Numericable-SFR general assembly meeting to be held no later than April 30.
In November, Altice closed on the deal to merge SFR with its Numericable operations for $18.64 billion. Under the terms of that transaction, Vivendi retained 20% of the merged company.
Altice seems to be on a telecom buying spree as the company also recently bought Brazilian operator Oi’s assets in Portugal Telecom.
News of the SFR stake offer comes on the heels of rumors that Altice has renewed interest in buying Bouygues Telecom. Altice and Bouygues advisers have held informal talks about a deal, according to Bloomberg. However, combining France’s No. 2 operator SFR with No. 3 Bouygues could run into regulatory hurdles.
More telecom news from Europe, the Middle East and Africa:
• Orange expects revenue to stabilize in the next two years. France’s leading operator Orange released annual numbers showing the results of recent cost-cutting measures. The telecom operator cut operating costs by $803.8 million last year. Annual revenue came in at $44.86 billion, falling 2.5%, but lower than the 4.5% decline posted in 2013. CFO Ramon Fernandez told Reuters that Orange expected its revenue to stabilize somewhere between 2015 and 2016, but that it depended on how its competitors behaved.
• Liquid Telecom raises $150 million investment for African broadband expansion. The funds are set to help extend the operator’s fiber network in Kenya, Rwanda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Liquid Telecom already boasts the largest cross-border fiber network on the continent, spanning more than 18,000 kilometers across 15 countries in East and Central Africa. Liquid Telecom said it secured the $150 million loan, facilitated by Standard Chartered, from large global investment banks.
• Vodafone Portugal selects Ceragon short-haul solution for large event coverage. The carrier selected the Ceragon FibeAir IP-20C solution to help handle coverage at large-scale public events. Ceragon’s outdoor multicore solution is designed to support up to 1 gigabit per second radio capacity using wireless short haul technology to backhaul high volume traffic from 3G and 4G cells.
• Hutchison Whampoa reportedly negotiating for Wind in Italy. Sources told Bloomberg that Hong Kong-based Hutchison has intensified talks with VimpelCom to possibly buy its wind unit in Italy. Hutchison, which operates as “Three” in several European countries, is also currently in talks with Telefónica to buy it’s O2 unit in the U.K. for $15.8 billion.
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