Cellnex, the European infrastructure major has inked an agreement to acquire 24,600 telecoms towers and existing 60,000 sites, with Cellnex committing to invest about 1.4 billion euros to deploy 5,250 more masts by 2030.
It will increase its foothold in Italy, the UK and Republic of Ireland, and expanding into three additional markets.
CK Hutchison is the latest mobile network operator to carve out mast infrastructure to cut debt and help pay for costly 5G network upgrades, while adding Austria, Sweden and Denmark to its footprint. Cellnex will make an initial payment of about 8.6 billion euros in cash, with the rest paid with new shares, giving CK Hutchison a 5% stake in Cellnex, according to filings from the companies.
The CK Hutchinson deal comes at the end of an 18-month period that has seen Cellnex transform their business. This is the third transformational deal the company makes following the EUR2.7 billion Salt & Illiad deal in May 2019 and the EUR2.4 billion purchase of Arqiva assets in October 2019. Including the CK Hutchinson deal and acquisition of Play Communications' towers in Poland, we expect EBITDA in 2023 to be around four times larger than 2018's EBITDA.
As per Bloomberg, cellnex shares were down 0.15% at 53.98 euros per share as of 2:48 p.m. in Madrid. The shares are up 50% this year.
