Telefonica has continued its strategy of monetising infrastructure assets by selling 2,029 towers in Ecuador and Colombia to Phoenix Tower International (PTI) for around EUR 290 million. In total, Telefonica Ecuador sold 1,408 towers for EUR 202 million while Telefonica Colombia sold a further 621 towers for EUR 87 million, complementing other tower disposals executed earlier in the year.
In a statement, Telefonica said the deal is part of its strategy to crystallise the value of its infrastructure, reinforced by the recent creation of Telefonica Infra. The unit will hold the group’s shareholdings in communications towers and other telecommunications infrastructure vehicles, with the company’s 50.01 percent stake in Telxius as its main asset.
During 2019, Telefonica has sold more than 6,000 mobile telecommunications sites (including around 3,000 to Telxius), at an implicit average multiple of 18x OIBDA. As a result, the company now owns, directly and through its subsidiaries, some 66,000 sites.
Of these, around 20,000 are owned by Telxius and the remaining 46,000 are owned by other group subsidiaries. More than 60 percent of these are located in Telefonica’s four core markets (Spain, Brazil, the UK, and Germany).
