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Vodafone has announced the sale of a further 10 per cent stake in a leading European mobile phone masts business for €1.3bn, as chief executive Margherita Della Valle continues her plans to simplify the sprawling telecoms group.
The disposal of the stake in Vantage Towers to a consortium of long-term infrastructure investors led by Global Infrastructure Partners and KKR will shift the joint venture to a 50/50 ownership structure and help the telecoms group reduce its debt pile.
Vodafone’s latest deal takes the total net proceeds from the selldown in Vantage to €6.6bn after an initial transaction in 2022. The stake has been sold at the same price of €32 a share. Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund bankrolled the 2022 deal.
Vantage Towers operates tens of thousands of mobile towers across 10 European countries, including the UK, Germany and Italy.
The UK-based group said proceeds from the sale would be used for cutting its debt levels and bringing down its net debt-to-adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation after leases to the lower half of its target range.
The announcement comes as the group has been steadily selling assets. In March, the FTSE 100 company agreed to sell its Italian operations to Swisscom for €8bn.
This followed the sale of Vodafone Spain for up to €5bn to Zegona Communications, founded by two former Virgin Media executives, announced in October.
Vodafone reported its net debt excluding its Spanish and Italian businesses as €33.2bn in May.
Vodafone and Three UK confirmed plans for a domestic merger in June 2023, which is now being probed by the Competition and Markets Authority.
At the time of the Italy exit announcement, the company said it would also return up to €4bn to shareholders through buybacks and cut its dividend to 4.5 cents a share from 2025, down from 9 cents in this financial year.
Kester Mann, director of consumer and connectivity at research group CCS Insight, said the sector had looked to monetise infrastructure assets in recent years. “Selling towers has proved a popular ploy for telecom operators looking to cash in on passive infrastructure to reduce debt and help fund expensive network investments,” he noted.
The European tower sector has been undergoing consolidation.
German group Deutsche Telekom in 2022 agreed to sell a majority stake in its towers business to Brookfield Asset Management and private equity group DigitalBridge Group in a deal that valued the business at €17.5bn.
Spain’s Telefónica and KKR agreed to sell Telxius, a telecom tower unit, to Boston-based American Tower in 2021 for €7.7bn.