The transaction involves an investment of around €5.2 billion and covers an additional investment of around €900 million over the next eight years to deploy, among other projects, up to 2,500 new sites. However, the French regulator confirmed the deal on the condition that Cellnex divests around 3,200 rooftops out of the total, which the group will manage in France following the integration.
It isn't the only acquisition for Cellnex this year after it completed on Play and Polkomtel Infrastruktura in Poland and the merger of its telecommunications tower business in the Netherlands with Deutsche Telekom.
Following these deals, chief executive Tobias Martinez (pictured) said that following "several transformative acquisitions and initiatives" the company is on track to have 200,000 sites, up from the 130,000 it planned by 2030 in 12 European countries.
Although the Hivory deal dates back to February, it received the green light this week on the same day Cellnex published its latest financial results.
Commenting on the developments Martínez added: "These inorganic growth opportunities coupled with achieving an organic growth in excess of 6% provides a dynamic that is reflected in an improvement of the key indicators of revenue, EBITDA and recurring cash flow. This allows us to confirm our outlook for the year of the review that we announced at the end of the first half, with revenues in excess of €2,500 million and an EBITDA of over €1,900 million”.
For the first nine months of the year Cellnex posted 53% growth in revenue and 59% growth in EBITDA.
In its financial results, Cellnex saw free and recurring leveraged cash flow rise 52% to come in at €660 million and, as can be expected, debt also increased.
Total investments made in the first nine months were about €8.3 billion, mostly related to the generation of new income –incorporation of new assets and the ongoing integration and roll-out of new infrastructure– together with improvements in the efficiency and maintenance of installed capacity.
The group’s net debt, as of 30 September, was €8.6 billion, compared to €6.5 billion at year end 2020.
As of 30 September, Cellnex had a total of 89,327 operational sites: 4,490 in Austria, 1,360 in Denmark, 10,359 in Spain, 11,583 in France, 1,807 in Ireland, 20,033 in Italy, 4,065 in the Netherlands, 14,525 in Poland, 5,148 in Portugal, 7,996 in the UK, 2,610 in Sweden and 5,351 in Switzerland; in addition, there are 4,222 DAS nodes and Small Cells (c. 30% more, at constant perimeter, than in 2020).
