Abertis snaps up Italian mobile towers

Abertis has bought TowerCo, a telecom towers business, from Italian transport group Atlantia for €94.6 million.

Based in Rome, TowerCo operates the mobile telecommunications towers on Italy’s toll road network, providing co-locations services to the country’s largest mobile operators. The company, which manages 306 sites on more than 3,000 kilometres of motorways, generated €21 million in revenues and €13 million in EBITDA last year.

The transaction is expected to close within the next few weeks. It will allow Atlantia to post an estimated consolidated gain of about €70 million, the company said in a statement.

The purchase is Abertis’ first in the terrestrial telecom sector outside Spain, where it currently controls a network of around 6,000 sites. It is also its second large-scale towers deal in less than a year, after the group acquired 4,227 units from Spanish operators Telefónica and Yoigo last June.

The news follows the announcement of strong first-quarter results for the group, with traffic growth on the roads it operates reaching 2.7 percent over the four months to end April – the largest percentage increase since the same period in 2007. Revenues, at €1.095 million, were up 4 percent in the first quarter, while EBITDA increased by 8.2 percent to €686 million.

The group is currently looking for further avenues to internationalise its business. The firm now generates 63 percent of revenues outside Spain.