Vantage Towers is looking at selling its Spanish telecom towers, according to reports in Bloomberg, The news follows hotly on the revelation that Zegona Communications has been negotiating a break in the tower deal between Vantage Towers and its subsidiary Vodafone Spain.
Discussions are said to be in the early stages and being led by Morgan Stanley. The sale of the Spanish towers has been estimated to raise roughly €1bn US($1.1bn), or $133k per tower.
Last week TowerXchange reported that Zegona was demanding at least a €50mn reduction in Vantage Towers’s annual lease, while also negotiating potential removal and relocation with Spain’s other towercos. Switching contracts would be highly unusual, given the substantial penalties Master Lease Agreements contain for early termination. However, sources indicated that Vodafone Spain could still achieve cost savings by moving to an alternative provider’s infrastructure as a non-anchor tenant.
Due to Spain’s towers being acquired as part of larger transactions or carve-outs (Vodafone and Vantage Towers; Orange and TOTEM; American Tower acquiring Telxius’s global telecom tower footprint) there are few contemporary public benchmarks on tower valuations in Spain, but it is likely the valuation for these towers are suppressed due to the conflict with Zegona.
Vantage Towers is co-owned by Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP) and KKR, with Vodafone Group holding a minority stake. Vodafone established the joint venture with KKR and GIP in 2022, a year before selling its Spanish opco to Zegona.
