Cellnex announced it has reached an agreement with Orange Spain to acquire a portfolio of 1,500 telecommunications sites. It includes towers and antennas located in urban, suburban and rural areas. The operation involves an overall investment of $289 million for Cellnex. The acquisition will be financed through available cash.
Cellnex and Orange Spain have also signed an initial 10-year contract, that can be extended by a subsequent period of 10 years and several one-year periods. Under the terms, Orange Spain will continue to use the sites that will be operated by Cellnex, placing its voice and data signal transmission equipment in them.
Alex Mestre, Global Business Director at Cellnex Telecom said this operation “not only reinforces our position in Spain as an independent telecommunications infrastructure operator, but also consolidates our relationship with Orange as one of the key clients of the group with which it had already been working in Spain as well as France.”
Over 2019 Cellnex signed long-term strategic collaboration agreements with:
- Iliad – in France and Italy – and with Salt in Switzerland to acquire 10,700 sites (5,700 in France, 2,200 in Italy and 2,800 in Switzerland) and roll out a construction (BTS) program of 4,000 new sites up to 2027 (2,500 in France and 1,000 in Italy for Iliad, and 500 for Salt in Switzerland). With a total planned investment of close to $4.48 billion ($3 billion for the acquisition of sites and $1.45 billion for BTS programs).
- British Telecom (BT) signed a long-term strategic collaboration agreement through which Cellnex acquired the operation and marketing rights of 220 tall telecom towers in the UK.
- Cignal in Ireland, one of the main Irish telecommunications infrastructure operators, for a total of $233 million. Cignal operates 546 sites in Ireland, which is now the seventh European country in which Cellnex has started operating. Furthermore, the company expects to roll out another 600 new sites up to 2026, with an additional investment estimated at $67 million.
- Arqiva for around $2.6 billion. The operation involves purchasing 7,400 owned sites and acquiring the marketing rights of some 900 sites in the United Kingdom. It also includes concessions for the use of urban fixtures for the deployment in 14 districts of London for telecommunications infrastructure. The finalization of the operation is planned for the second half of 2020.
January 9, 2020
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