Telefonica Goes on with Plans to Sell Tower Business in Germany

Markus Haas, CEO of Telefonica Deutschland, confirmed that the company plans to sell number of its towers following extremely high demand for the assets. Haas added the valuations the company received had been sufficiently attractive to justify their sale.

He did not detail the proportion of assets being sold or identify a buyer. The deal is expected to be completed in the next two months. The comments were made during a call with German media following a business update on the division’s progress in Q1 and comes weeks after reports in the Spanish business press stating the operator was preparing to offload €1.5 billion-worth of assets to Telefonica subsidiary Telxius.

Telefonica holds a 50.01 per cent stake in the infrastructure company, with other shareholders including investment companies KKR and Pontegadea. Sale of infrastructure assets in Germany is part of a wider Telefonica initiative to raise funds by selling and leasing back towers. Part of the plan, unveiled in September 2019, was to investigate whether to transfer the assets into Telxius or sell to another party.