Spain’s Cellnex eyes sale of Irish telecoms assets

Spanish telecoms group Cellnex is plotting a sale of some of its assets in Europe – including €1bn worth of communications towers it owns in Ireland.

The group owns tens of thousands of mast sites in countries including Spain, France, Italy, Poland, the UK and the Netherlands. It’s reportedly eyeing a sale of all or part of its assets in Ireland and Austria to cut debt and eyes an improved credit rating from Standard & Poor’s.

In September, Cellnex said it had agreed to sell a 49pc stake in its Swedish and Danish operations to infrastructure investment firm Stonepark for an initial €730m.

State-owned forestry group Coillte sold its 300 tower sites in a €70m deal to newly-formed Irish telecoms infrastructure firm Cignal, which was established by French investment group Infravia. The French firm sold Cignal to Cellnex in 2019 for €210m. By then, Cignal owned 546 telecoms sites across Ireland.

At the time of the acquisition by Cellnex, the Spanish group committed to investing an additional €60m in the Irish operation to build up to 600 new sites by 2026. That would bring high-speed wireless broadband to more rural areas and also help mobile operators address coverage blackspots.

In 2021, Cellnex acquired hundreds more towers in Ireland valued at €600m from Hutchison, the owner of mobile operator Three, as part of a wider €10bn tower deal with the telecoms group. That entire acquisition added almost 25,000 masts to Cellnex’s portfolio.

In third-quarter results released this month, Cellnex told investors that its deleveraging targets remain unchanged and that it’s committed to securing a BBB- rating from Standard & Poor’s by next year at the latest, and maintaining its investment grade rating from Fitch.

The group has net debt of €17.6bn and has told investors that it will be able to rapidly cut the figure over the next few years due to its strong cash flow. Its current net debt to Ebitda is at about five times, a figure it projects will be cut to virtually zero by 2034.

If the group is to sell its assets in Ireland, there is likely to be a number of interested bidders.

Among them could be UK-based infrastructure investment group John Laing. It finalised a deal this year to acquire Irish mast company Towercom from Infrabridge, the infrastructure manager of the Irish Infrastructure Fund. Towercom has 409 towers in Ireland.

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