Cellnex Telecom has agreed to acquire 100% of NOS Towering from the Portuguese mobile operator NOS.
According to the Spanish telco, the transaction initially involves around 2,000 telecommunication sites, encompassing towers and rooftop antennas located in urban (40%), suburban and rural (60%) areas throughout the country.
It represents an initial cash payment of around €375 million (EV), in addition to a Capex of around €175 million related to a perimeter increase of up to 400 new sites, including a Build-to-Suit programme and other agreed initiatives over the next six years.
Under the agreement, Cellnex and NOS have signed an initial 15-year contract, extendible by successive additional 15-year periods, under which NOS will continue to use the sites that Cellnex will operate, locating its voice and data signal transmission equipment there.
Cellnex notes that once these assets are fully integrated and the new sites rolled out, the estimated additional EBITDA (IFRS16) generated for the group will be around €50 million.
With the transaction, Cellnex’s backlog of future sales contracted will grow by €2 billion to €46 billion.
The closing of the transaction is subject to the usual administrative and regulatory authorisations.
Commenting in the development, Cellnex CEO Tobias Martinez said: “the capacity of Cellnex teams, both at corporate level and in Portugal, to continue progressing in new agreements with our customers, even at a particularly complex and sensitive scenario as the one we are currently facing.
“The agreement reached with NOS reinforces the nature and the neutral and independent operator profile that characterises the Cellnex model. Following the very recent agreement to acquire OMTEL, also in Portugal, this transaction exemplifies the sense of being an operator which, precisely due to its neutral and independent nature, can consolidate long-term collaboration projects with the various MNOs and telecom operators who access our infrastructures to roll out their telecommunications networks”.
Cellnex Telecom operates wireless telecommunications and broadcasting infrastructures with a portfolio of 61,000 sites including forecast rollouts up to 2027. It is present in Spain, Italy, Netherlands, France, Switzerland, the UK, Ireland and Portugal.
The company’s business is structured in four major areas: telecommunication infrastructures services; audiovisual broadcasting networks; security and emergency service networks; and solutions for smart urban infrastructure and services management (Smart cities and the Internet of Things (IoT)).