American Tower Corporation and global insurer and investment firm Allianz, announced that Allianz Capital Partners and the Allianz European Infrastructure Fund, will acquire a 10% stake in ATC Europe.
The transaction is valued at over 530 million euros ($633 million), reinforcing a more than €8.8 billion enterprise value for ATC Europe.
American Tower will retain managerial and operational control, as well as day-to-day oversight of ATC Europe, while Allianz will obtain seats on ATC Europe’s Board of Directors, along with certain governance rights.
Tom Bartlett, American Tower’s president and CEO, said, “We are extremely pleased to add Allianz as a partner in ATC Europe. Allianz’ global infrastructure experience, extensive European investment history and investment philosophy are an excellent match for our value creation objectives in Europe, and we look forward to growing the business together while strengthening mobile broadband access in our served markets.”
“Digital infrastructure has underscored in particular during the pandemic its importance as essential infrastructure to the public. We are excited to partner with American Tower and CDPQ in ATC Europe, one of Europe’s leading independent telecommunications tower operators. This long-term strategic partnership perfectly complements our existing digital infrastructure investments in fiber-to-the-home roll-outs and will contribute to further position ATC Europe in some of our core markets such as Germany, France and Spain while delivering stable cash yields to our investors,” said Michael Pfennig, member of the management board and co-head of Infrastructure at Allianz Capital Partners.
Allianz Capital Partners is one of Allianz Group’s asset managers for alternative equity investments and is part of Allianz Global Investors.
In May, American Tower Corporation and Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ), a global investment group, announced that the latter will acquire a 30% stake in ATC Europe. ATC said that the transaction is valued at over 1.6 billion euros.
Earlier this month, American Tower announced that it had closed the first tranche of the acquisition of Telxius Towers, comprised of nearly 20,000 communications sites in Germany and Spain, for total consideration of approximately 6.2 billion euros.
Approximately 4,000 additional rooftop communications sites in Germany are expected to close in the third quarter of 2021.
Also this month, ATC closed the Latin American tranche of its Telxius Towers acquisition, comprised of over 7,000 communications sites in Brazil, Peru, Chile and Argentina, the company said in a release. ATC said that the total value of the transaction amounted to approximately 900 million euros
In January, Spanish telecom operator Telefónica’s subsidiary Telxius Telecom had signed an agreement with American Tower Corporation for the sale of its telecommunications towers businesses in Europe and Latin America.
The agreement involves 30,722 telecommunication tower sites and covers two separate and independent transactions: One for the European division and another for the business in Latin America. Telxius has telecommunications towers in Spain, Germany, Brazil, Peru, Chile and Argentina.
