Advanced Television

Portugal: Altice Europe, Morgan Stanley create fibre wholesaler

December 13, 2019

Altice Europe, through its subsidiary MEO, has signed an agreement with Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners to create a nationwide fibre wholesaler in Portugal. MEO will sell a minority equity stake of 49.99 per cent in Altice Portugal FTTH based on an enterprise value of €4.63 billion.

Altice Portugal FTTH is the largest FTTH wholesaler in Portugal with c.4.0 million FTTH homes passed by year-end 2019. Altice Portugal FTTH comprises of all MEO’s fibre assets in Portugal including FTTH and dark fibre.

Altice Portugal FTTH will sell wholesale services to all operators at the same financial terms. MEO will sell technical services to Altice Portugal FTTH for the construction, the subscriber connection and the maintenance of its fibre network.

Patrick Drahi, founder of Altice, said: “I am very pleased that our partnership with Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners, initiated in the context of our Portuguese tower transaction in 2018, now continues with a transformational fibre project. Following this transaction, Altice Europe has obtained cash proceeds in excess of €5.7 billion through the transformational SFR FTTH transaction and the various tower sales and partnerships announced in 2018. Altice’s portfolio of infrastructure assets continues to grow. On a 100 per cent proforma basis, SFR FTTH and our towers in France in addition to our fibre and towers in Portugal, already represent more than €0.8 billion of revenues and more than €0.5 billion of EBITDA, effectively constituting one of the largest telecom infrastructure groups in Europe. We continue to focus on deleveraging Altice Europe through growing revenues and EBITDA, supplemented with the disposal proceeds from this transaction.

“This fantastic transaction with our long-standing partners at Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners will accelerate the deleveraging of the Group towards its stated leverage target. It will open the way to significant refinancing transactions in 2020 enabling us to accelerate our announced program of debt interest reduction (target of €0.7 billion annual savings),” Drahi concluded.

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