Founder and CEO oversaw three-year transformation into Europe’s largest towerco
Tobias Martinez, who founded Barcelona-based Cellnex and has been its CEO for eight years, has resigned, the Financial Times [subscription needed] reports. A flurry of dealmaking in the last three years propelled Cellnex to become Spain’s biggest telecom group and Europe’s largest towerco with about 130,000 sites.
However, as inflation and interest rates rise, towercos the world over are entering a new era when super-cheap debt is not an option and operators’ tower were being sold off at high prices to investors keen to secure guaranteed, long-term income.
Rising costs
Now higher interest rates are biting meaning that the heavily indebted towercos need to rest their financial model as their share prices fall. Cellnex’s debt stands at €17.1 billion and its share price has lost about 25% in the last 12 months.
Last November the Spanish towerco had clearly seen the writing on the wall and said it wanted to achieve investment grade status, which requires the company to lower its gearing from eight times earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation to under seven. The plan is to limit capex – almost all the most desirable tower estate has been gobbled up anyway – and cut debt between now and 2025 to achieve that.
Martinez will leave the company on 1 June.