The French telecoms tycoon is looking to sell off its Portuguese assets piecemeal while the fate of Altice France, the country’s second biggest operator, appears to be in the balance
According to Jornal Economico, Altice Portugal is in negotiations to sell its 50.01% stake it in Portuguese wholesale fibre access network operator, FastFiber, to Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners. The infrastructure fund already owns the other 49.99%. FastFiber’s network passes 5.7 million premises.
The owner of Altice International, telecoms entrepreneur Patrick Drahi, has been trying to sell Altice Portugal to raise funds and reduce the group’s debts which amount to about $60 billion. Altice International’s debt is relatively modest at €8.5 billion.
No deal so far
Although a number of parties have shown interest – including rival Xavier Niel and most recently Saudi’s stc in a mooted €8 billion sale – Drahi has been unable to secure a deal. He then switched to Plan B in August; selling off parts of the operator in separate deals.
Drahi sold his 24.5% stake in BT to India’s Bharti Airtel for about £3 billion (€3.587 billion) although the amount was not made public. In the same month, he also agreed to sell Teads, its global media platform, to the content recommendation specialist Outbrain. This was in a $1 billion transaction consisting of $725 million cash, $25 million of deferred cash, $105 million in convertible preferred stock and 35 million shares of common stock.
French assets
Drahi has also been looking to offload French assets. In March, Altice Group entered into an exclusive deal to sell Altice Media to the shipping group CMA CGM for cash payment for was what seen as the high price of €1.55 billion. Altice Media owns the popular French 24-hour news channel BFM and radio broadcaster RMC.
Now Bloomberg reports Altice France is believed to be negotiating with creditors to swap an equity stake of up to 15% in return for reducing Altice France’s debt of about €24.4 billion by the same percentage.
Previously creditors proposed a deal that would have seen Drahi losing control of Altice France. It seems the ownership of Altice France (SFR), the second largest operator in the country after Orange, hangs in the balance.