Albertis to spin off €4bn telecoms infrastructure business

Abertis, the Spanish infrastructure company, will spin off its telecoms business into a Spanish-listed public company valued at close to €4bn in one of the largest European initial public offerings this year.

Abertis is selling a 55 per cent stake in its telecoms infrastructure business, which has recently been renamed Cellnex Telecom, as part of plans to grow the company rapidly through the acquisition of European mobile telephone towers. A range of institutional investors will acquire stakes from Abertis.

Cellnex Telecom will become the leading European independent operator of wireless telecommunications infrastructure by number of towers, and one of the largest owners in broadcasting infrastructure. It owns and operates a portfolio of 15,170 sites, of which half are in Spain.

Cellnex last month completed the acquisition of broadcast towers from Telecom Italia, and is considering a number of other deals around Europe to bolster a portfolio of radio, TV and mobile towers.

The company will operate independently from Abertis, which will use the cash to expand its toll road network and pay more money back to shareholders.

"Looking ahead, we are seeing significant potential for growth in telecom site outsourcing in Europe with very favourable underlying market dynamics," said Tobias Martinez, chief executive of Cellnex Telecom.

Towers companies such as Cellnex are still relatively rare in Europe compared with the US and parts of Africa, where groups such as American Tower and IHS are buying up thousands of mobile masts and then renting space back to mobile operators to use for their wireless services. Tower companies can use one site to provide services to multiple operators, which brings economies of scale.

European telecoms companies have largely chosen to own their mobile infrastructure although there are signs that this is slowly changing with the sale by Telecom Italia of its masts as well as a similar deal mooted by rival Wind in Italy.

The Barcelona-headquartered group employs about 1,200 people and generated €436m in revenues and €178m in earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation in 2014.

Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and Caixabank are co-ordinating the offer, while Banco Santander, BNP Paribas, Citi and Societe Generale are joint bookrunners.

The Abertis IPO will be the second big telecoms listing in Europe this year. Sunrise, Switzerland's number two telecoms operator, raised more than SFr2bn from a February listing that paved the way for its private equity owners CVC to sell down their control of the company.

Demand for European listings has been bolstered by efforts by the European Central Bank to stimulate the region's economies by pumping money into the system through a series of asset purchases. The European Central Bank's actions have had the effect of attracting capital into eurozone stocks, which have benefited from the stimulus measures.

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