Renta 4 | 1-. The UK Competition regulator, the CMA, has given the green light to Cellnex’s purchase of 6,000 towers from Hutchinson in the region. The deal is subject to the Spanish firm’s sale of 1,000 sites which overlap geographically with those of Hutchinson. 2-. From what we can glean from the communication, the 1,000 sites which will be subject to being sold off correspond to part of the…
Cellnex has announced it will buy the Hutchinson towers in Europe for 10 billion euros. The operation will be paid partly in shares so that Hutchinson will acquire 5% of the Spanish group. Since its IPO five years ago, this has invested more than 25 billion euros in purchases. This latest operation with CK Hutchinson will position Cellnex with more than 100,000 towers closer to the world leader American Tower.
Cellnex would be studying taking a minority stake in the European telecommunication tower network CK Hutchison, which is valued at about $10 billion, according to Bloomberg. This has been linked to news about Cellnex potentially making a €3 billion capital increase to raise funds for a large operation. The acquisition of a minority stake in a telco tower business would imply a deviation from Cellnex’s growth strategy up to now, as it has focused on buying complete networks.
If Telefonica approves the choice of current CEO José María Álvarez-Pallete to replace Cesar Alierta as Chairman, he will be the first Executive Chairman not to be appointed by the Spanish government. Alvarez-Pallete will face two main challenges: securing European Commission approval for the sale of O2 and dealing with the weakness of the LatAm economies, particularly Brazil.
The sale of Telefonica’s O2 to Hong Kong telecoms giant Hutchison remains up in the air. And the European Commission (EC), which has the final responsibility for the outcome of the transaction, is still being a dog in a manger, under pressure from the UK authorities.