European telecom infrastructure company Cellnex’s chief financial officer will be departing as of the end of October, the company said over the weekend. The departure of CFO José Manuel Aisa after nine years with the company follows on a change in CEO earlier this year, with former CEO Tobias Martinez Gimeno having exited in June to be replaced by new CEO Marco Patuano.
Cellnex said that Aisa is leaving to pursue other professional endeavors, and credited him for his “valuable contribution and dedication” to the company. The company is now on the hunt for a new CFO.
When former CEO Martinez Gimeno submitted his resignation letter in January of this year, he said that the company’s “current economic and financial context … demands that we open a new chapter in Cellnex’s story” which he said should be focused on “maximizing organic growth; consolidating the industrial project in the countries where we operate today; and focusing on balance sheet management to achieve the goal of ‘investment grade’.” He said that the company should be led “by a person with a time horizon that extends beyond December 2024, at which time my contract ends.”
Cellnex’s revenues in the first half were up 17%
Cellnex reported last week that its revenues for the first half of this year were up 17% from the same time last year, although it said that costs associated with consolidation and integration of acquisitions resulted in a loss of 193 million euros.
The company recently closed on a 315 million euro loan from the European Investment Bank to finance 5G infrastructure deployment in France, Italy, Spain, Poland and Portugal.
Commenting on the results, Patuano said that Cellnex continues to see “momentum in the business with strong growth across all of our industrial and financial metrics in the first half of the year.
“All our strategic pillars—focus on organic growth, capex discipline and efficiencies—are confirmed,” said Patuano.
Telecom infrastructure accounted for around 91% of its revenues and saw a year-over-year increase of more than 19%. The company also provides broadcasting infrastructure, which accounted for less than 6% of its revenues at 115 million euros; and emergency services networks and IoT/smart city infrastructure management which brought in about 3% of its revenue, or around 62 million euros.
Cellnext said that as of June 30, it had 112,737 operational sites, with an additional 16,060 sites that it plans to roll out by 2030.
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