Spain’s Telefonica Looks To Make Money From Mobile Towers

Spain’s Telefonica said on Tuesday it would speed up a plan to make money from its tens of thousands of mobile towers sites, and present a voluntary redundancy and employee training plan to labour unions.

Europe’s third-biggest telecom company, like many peers, has been struggling to post strong growth in an increasingly crowded market and its share price has fallen 10% this year.

Telefonica said in a statement it owned around 50,000 mast sites outside its main tower unit Telxius, and wanted both to share more infrastructure and “capitalise on interest in our infrastructure both from public and private” groups in the sector.

Communications masts have long been a popular investment target for private equity firms because of their steady cash flows. Telefonica calculated those 50,000 sites could generate core earnings of around 360 million euros.―Reuters