Europe’s largest towerco has registered a land acquisition company – Celland – which will be focused on its key Western European markets of Spain, Portugal, France, Italy and the United Kingdom, the company announced during its H1 2024 financial results on 1st August.
The move follows its strategy to pursue a New Chapter, following a period of inorganic growth. At TowerXchange Meetup Europe 2024 earlier this year, CEO Marco Patuano said that owning the land under the towers is strategically important; it enables towercos to protect themselves against land aggregators. Cellnex is already the towerco that owns the most land in Europe, but this ownership is below 15%, compared to land under towers owned by towercos in the US, which stands between 40% and 70%. The latter puts the company and its European counterparts in less favourable positions compared to the other side of the Atlantic, he added.
Macro business diversification
In addition to transforming a part of the business into a landco, Cellnex also continues to pursue macro business diversification under its New Chapter. The towerco reported DAS, small cells and other network services contributed 6% of revenue, or EUR123mn (up 17% year-on-year) in H1 2024. In addition, wholesale fibre, connectivity and co-location services (Housing) contributed to 5% of revenue, or EUR96mn (up 24% year-on-year). Broadcasting brought 7% of revenue with EUR129m (up 3% year-on-year) and macro (sites for telecommunications operators) contributed 82% of revenue, or EUR1.573 bn (up 6% year-on-year).
Cellnex has earlier said it aims to grow its revenue base from non-core services, beyond tower co-location and broadcast from 10% to 15% by FY27 which also includes RAN-as-a-service expansion which it started offering in Poland.
Closing H1 2024 with a revenue of EUR1.921bn, the towerco announced having had a period marked by a consistent commercial performance and a robust operational execution with Points of Presence (PoPs) across its sites increasing by 9.3% year-on-year. That increase is broken down to 6.2% coming from new co-locations at existing sites, with a total of 4,668 (most notably in Italy and Portugal) and 3.1% from the rollout of 2,482 new PoPs during the period, thanks to the increase in Built-to-Suit (BTS) programmes in France and Poland.
EBITDAaL (EBITDA after leases) is up 8.4% year-on-year at EUR1.114bn. "We are making good progress in Cellnex's Next Chapter, focused on consolidating and streamlining our structure, strengthening our balance sheet and maximising shareholder value, thus fulfilling our commitments to the market”, Patuano said.
At its H1 2024 results announcement, the towerco also confirmed it is in advanced negotiations regarding its Austrian business and has received binding offers. Due to the Austrian assets the Group's net result in the reporting period was negative (-EUR418mn), mainly due to the classification as held for sale of its business in the country. Austria is part of Cellnex’ s selective business divestment aimed at reducing debt and focusing on key markets.
Last year Cellnex signed deals to sell a 49% stake in its Nordics business, its mobile private networks unit and earlier this year Cellnex Ireland (the latter deal being currently investigated by the Irish regulator CCPC).
The towerco has for some time indicated it may consider selling a stake in its Polish business too but no reference to that was mentioned in its recent financial results. This may relate to reaching an agreement for the divestment of Austrian business first, an announcement that is expected later this year.
