Cellnex will pay €375 million for the acquisition, and will pay a further €175 million in capex to expand the network to 400 new sites. The acquisition price equates to about €187,000 per existing tower.
Cellnex CEO Tobias Martínez underlined “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”.
It is the second deal in two weeks for the NOS group: on 2 April it agreed to sell its international carrier business to Alexandre Pébereau’s Tofane Global for an undisclosed price.
Under the tower agreement, Cellnex and NOS have signed an initial 15-year contract, extensible by successive additional 15-year periods, under which NOS will continue to use Cellnex sites for its voice and data network.
Cellnex, which is based in Barcelona, already has an agreement to acquire another Portuguese tower company, Omtel. Martínez said: “The agreement reached with NOS reinforces the nature and the neutral and independent operator profile that characterises the Cellnex model.”
He added: “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 [mobile network operators] and telecom operators who access our infrastructures to roll out their telecommunications networks.”
Cellnex, which is chaired by former Telecom Italia CEO Franco Bernabè, now has 61,000 sites, in Spain, Italy, Netherlands, France, Switzerland, the UK, Ireland and Portugal.
Its NOS Towering deal includes towers and rooftop antennas, with 40% in urban settings and the rest in suburbs and rural locations. “The acquisition will be financed with available cash,” said Cellnex.
