Operator raises its full-year guidance for the second time this year after another successful quarter with its fibre strategy paying off
Proximus has agreed to sell its datacentres to the Belgium-based Datacenter United for an enterprise value of €128 million. It expects to close the transation in Q1 of 2025, subject to all the necessary agreements and approvals being obtained.
Proximus says it will “continue to pursue its hybrid cloud strategy and further sharpen its focus on delivering value added services to customers as an IT integrator”.
New entity
The transaction is structured “as a transfer of branch of activity into a newly incorporated entity owned by Datacenter United”. Proximus intends to transfer the employees and subcontractors involved in datacentre activities to this new entity.
The sale covers the datacentre infrastructure in Evere, Mechelen and Machelen, including the Proximus-owned property on the former two locations, the supplier contracts and part of the housing customer contracts.
The datacentres provide a total capacity of about 11MW, serving Proximus’ internal IT applications and B2B housing and hosting services for enterprise customers.
After the transaction, Proximus will enter into a 10-year master service agreement (MSA) with the new entity to secure the provision of datacentre services, along with a separate multi-year lease agreement for office and telco spaces in Evere and Mechelen.
The colocation and rental fees paid by Proximus will be partly offset by opex savings for the operations and maintenance, and reduced capex investment related to the ongoing modernisation of the datacentres’ infrastructure and activities.
Specialist support
Proximus reckons that by joining forces with a specialised operational partner like Datacenter United it will be able to focus more on “delivering top-notch integrated IT services” and its hybrid cloud strategy.
It says it will continue to offer an end-to-end service, integrating public and private cloud with on-premise solutions, naturally with AI in the mix, plus security and managed service capabilities.
Datacenter United was founded in 2010 and operates nine datacentres in Belgium, ensuing that data remains hosted in Belgium.
The sale of the datacentre business is part of Proximus’ bold2025 strategy to optimise its assets to focus on core activities, including by divesting itself of €500 million-worth of assets by 2027.
Guillaume Boutin, CEO of Proximus Group (pictured) said, “The decision to cooperate with an external partner on our datacentre housing and infrastructure business is a key milestone in our asset divestment plan. By partnering with Datacenter United, we ensure that Proximus and our customers will continue to benefit from state-of-the-art infrastructure while we concentrate on delivering excellent IT integration services.”
Earnings report
The CEO was also celebrating the operator’s Q3 results, raising full-year guidance for the second time this year. Boutin said about the Q3 results, “Domestically, our Residential unit continues to perform very well in spite of an intense competitive market, with B-brands adjusting mobile pricing in anticipation of the newcomer on the Belgian market. Thanks to our top-tier gigabit networks, and our multi-branded competitive offering, we successfully expanded our postpaid customer base by 44,000 over the third quarter.
“At the same time, we further grew our residential internet base in a seasonally slower quarter, adding 9,000 subscriptions. For our Business unit, we achieved further growth in IT and Fixed Data services, partially offsetting the headwind from some IT product volatility and the contract loss of the Vlaamse Overheid in 2023.
During the quarter, Proximus also gained more than 47,000 mobile postpaid customers. The consolidation of Proximus’ and Orange Belgium’s mobile infrastructure, managed by Mwingz, continues.
In the quarter is signed up more than 9,000 fixed broadband subscribers and some 13,000 converged service customers. It has passed more than 2.1 home with fibre and has a total of 1,814,000 active residential fibre lines. This a 2.5% in a year, helped by Proximus’ expanding fibre footprint and its multi-brand approach.
Proximus is expanding its fibre network, now reaching 35% of Belgian premises (2.08 million), with its FTTC footprint hitting 40%. Domestic revenue was up 1.5%, with residential services’ revenue up by 3% and its business unit revenues increased 0.5% year-on-year.
Full details here.