The Austrian group’s EuroTeleSites will go public in H2 2023
A1 Telekom Austria Group confirmed plans to spin off its tower business – comprising 13,225 macro sites – will be spun-off and listed as EuroTeleSites on the Vienna Stock Exchange by September/October.
The towerco will be led by chief executive Ivo Ivanovski, who has been leading the separation project for three years and has been with A1 since 2016. The ownership structure of the spun-off company will initially be retained in relation to the previous ownership structure of Telekom Austria AG. The transaction is still to be approved by Telekom Austria’s shareholders at an extraordinary general meeting on 1 August 2023.
Other new supervisory board members include: chairwoman Barbara Potisk-Eibensteiner, deputy chairman Oscar Von Hauske Solis, Roxana Flores Anderson, Elisabetta Castiglioni, Santiago Dawson, Daniel Hajj Slim, Edith Hlawati, Ernesto Leyva, Elisabeth Muhr and Ana Simic.
Fitch gave the nascent unit a BBB- credit rating stating that its highly visible cash flow profile was supported by long-term inflation-linked contracts with its strong anchor tenant, Telekom Austria, and third parties.
“A1 Towers has a leading market position in its largest market, Austria, and is geographically diversified across six markets,” stated Fitch, adding that constraints included limited customer diversification and expected negative free cash flow over the next two years, driven by high capex.
Fitch added that the rating was influenced by the towerco’s ultimate majority stakeholder – Carlos Slim-owned América Móvil which would have a strategic incentive to support the new company.
Prices up, revenue up
The tower details emerged at A1’s results this week which saw a solid revenue performance in the first half of 2023, leading the telco to up its full-year revenue guidance a touch to 5%.
Price increases helped the Group increase revenue 7% (€1,299m) and EBITDA 6% (€486m). However, capex spiked from €148m to €359m mainly due to spectrum licences in Croatia and increasing broadband rollout costs in Austria.
The telco group has around 27 million customers and is currently operating in seven countries under the brand A1: Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Belarus, Slovenia, the Republic of North Macedonia and the Republic of Serbia. And results across each country were mixed with Belarus getting whacked unfavourable forex and rising costs. Bulgaria, Serbia and Croatia all fared better.