Telefonica is seeking to reduce its net financial debt by another EUR 500 million with the sale of a minority stake in its technology unit, according to unnamed financial sources cited by Spanish business daily Cinco Dias. The operator has hired KPMG and Morgan Stanley to seek a buyer, with private equity funds including Apax reportedly interested.
The group's Telefonica Tech unit comprising its Cybersecurity & Cloud and Big Data & IoT businesses is valued at around EUR 1 billion, with the operator said to be prepared to sell a 49 percent stake as part of its ongoing process to divest assets to cut debt. Recent moves in that regard have included the sale of Telxius towers to American Tower for EUR 7.7 billion and the divestment of a majority stake in its Chilean fibre-optic network to KKR.
Telefonica Tech was set up in November 2019, when the company said it expected the unit to generate more than EUR 2 billion of additional revenues in 2022 by focusing on digital services in greatest demand among companies. Last year it contributed around EUR 1.2 billion in business revenues, added the report.
