Global M&A activity in telecoms infrastructure is showing little sign of cooling, with an estimated $62 billion of significantly-sized deals expected to come to market before the end of 2019, according to a recent analysis by TMT Finance.
TMT Finance is currently tracking 44 live deal situations globally within tower infrastructure, data centers, fiber optic networks and cloud hosting, where deal volumes in telecoms have remained buoyant this year despite economic and political uncertainty in key markets.
Current telecom infrastructure M&A deals in process include:
Americas
CyrusOne
- CyrusOne, the Dallas-based data center giant, is currently in the second round of the auction process for sale and could fetch up to $15 billion, depending on the appetite of bidders.
AT&T
- In an effort to reduce its debt pile, AT&T is selling 1,300 U.S. towers at a potential $750 million, exploring the sale of 1,000 Mexico towers, as well as its Puerto Rico business valued at $1.5 billion.
BT
- BT is looking to divest most of its overseas operations to focus on the U.K. market. As such, the deals team have put its entire Latin American business up for sale at a reported cost of $1.5 billion.
Asia
Reliance Jio
- Brookfield Infrastructure Partners has agreed to buy towers from Reliance Jio in multi-stage deals. Valuation for the 170,000 towers are reported to be $5 billion.
Indosat
- Indonesia’s Indosat is selling several thousand towers with final bids due imminently. The portfolio could be worth at least $500 million.
Europe
CTIL
- In an effort to monetize its tower infrastructure, Vodafone is eyeing a potential £2.5 billion ($3 billion) sale of its 50:50 U.K. towers joint venture with Telefonica, dubbed Cornerstone Telecommunications Infrastructure Limited (CTIL).
Deutsche Glasfaser
- Private equity firm KKR is expected to formally kick off the sale of its German fiber-optic network operator Deutsche Glasfaser this month, which could fetch at least €3 billion ($3.3 billion).
Arqiva
- Almost two years after pulling out of a £6 billion ($7.4 billion) float, U.K. infrastructure firm Arqiva will reportedly split its television and radio broadcast infrastructure and its telecoms towers infrastructure, and either sell or list one or both entities, worth several billion pounds.