Spanish operator aims to complete the process this year
Spanish telecommunications company Telefonica is working on the spinoff of its domestic infrastructure unit, Reuters reported.
The European telco may decide to list the new company or sell a minority stake at the new firm during the first half of 2016, according to the report. The new unit will own Telefonica’s 11,500 cell towers in Spain, as well as data centers and some domestic undersea cables. The new firm is set to have a market valuation of between 5 billion euro and 6 billion euro, according to the report.
Telefonica has already sold more than 1,000 cell towers in its domestic market to Spanish infrastructure firm Cellnex.
According to the report, the new unit could also own towers currently operated by Telefonica in international markets such as Germany and Brazil. With the addition of certain overseas assets, the valuation of the new unit will exceed 10 billion euros, according to the report.
The European telco ended September with a total of 321 million subscribers in its global operation. Mobile subscribers totaled 251.4 million at the end of the third quarter, up 11.6% year-over-year.
Orange acquires Bharti Airtel’s operations in Sierra Leona, Burkina Faso
In other EMEA news, French telecoms group Orange completed the acquisition of Indian telco Bharti Airtel’s operations in Sierra Leone and Burkina Faso.
The acquisition adds approximately 5.5 million subscribers to Orange’s global subscriber base. Earlier this week, the French company closed on the acquisition of Liberia’s largest operator Cellcom Telecommunications.
Orange did not disclose the terms of the latest transaction. The French group also has a presence in other African markets including Cameroon, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Niger.
