According to BNN Bloomberg, there is now a shortlist of potential investor’s in Altice France’s XpFibre unit
KKR and Macquarie Group are on the shortlist of potential buyers for Altice France’s XpFibre subsidiary, according to BNN Bloomberg. Others on the shortlist include the pension fund Caisse de Depot et Placement du Quebec and Global Infrastructure Partners.
Altice France is part of the Altice group controlled by billionaire Patrick Drahi. Since September, the group has been seeking to offload assets as the cost of serving debt mounts – and the group’s debt amounts to €60 billion.
Drahi’s preferred option was to sell a minority stake in the SFR business, but unnamed sources cited by BNN Bloomberg say investors are more interested in the fibre network unit.
Altice France owns 50.01% of XpFibre which is responsible for the construction, maintenance and commercialisation of the fibre network in France. The minority stake is owned by a consortium, in which the biggest shareholder is OMERS Infrastructure. Other consortium members include Allianz Capital Partners and AXA IM Real Assets.
The three investors acquired the minority stake for €1.7 billion in 2019, which values the whole of XpFibre at €3.4 billion.
Altice France is the biggest unit in the Altice group.
None of the offers are binding and the sale of XpFibre is not assured. Altice is also looking to sell major assets in Portugal.