The Vodafone radio tower subsidiary Vantage Towers wants to use the good mood on the stock markets and the increased demand for radio masts for the largest initial public offering (IPO) of the year in Europe. The new issue in Frankfurt should be up to 2.8 billion euros, announced Vantage Towers on Tuesday. This would mean that the floor on the floor would be larger than that of the online used car dealer Auto1, which debuted at the beginning of February.
With a volume of 1.8 billion euros, the Berlin start-up Auto1 carried out the largest share issue of the year in Germany to date, topped only by the Polish InPost in Amsterdam in Europe. In Germany, Vantage would rank behind Knorr-Bremse's IPO in 2018 in terms of size.
The price range was set at 22.50 to 29.00 euros. This results in a market value of Vantage Towers of up to 14.7 billion euros. The subscription period began on Tuesday and will last until March 17th. One day later, the share is to be traded on the Frankfurt floor for the first time.
Radio masts are in business
Vantage benefits from the fact that radio masts are currently booming due to accelerated digitization and the expensive 5G network structure. Infrastructure providers such as Vantage can rent the masts on the ground and on the roofs to several telecommunications companies at the same time, which promises regular income for years. “The demand for data and connectivity across Europe is driving growth in the radio tower industry,” said CEO Vivek Badrinath.
And that in turn fuels the deals: Cellnex recently spent ten billion euros on 25,000 masts from CK Hutchison 0001.HK throughout Europe, and the Telefonica subsidiary Telxius sold its mobile communications sites to American Tower for 7.7 billion euros. The French telecom group Orange packed its radio masts in Spain and the home country into its own company and brought an IPO or sale into play.
So far, Vantage Towers operates 82,000 locations in ten European countries – significantly fewer than Cellnex will soon call its own, but far behind American Tower. Vantage will not receive any proceeds from the IPO, but Badrinath says it has around one billion euros left for acquisitions that could be increased through capital increases.
Two anchor investors
Vodafone will initially raise two billion euros and – depending on the issue price – sell up to 88.9 million shares in Vantage Towers. If there is sufficient demand, the issue can be increased by 500 million euros. There is also a placement reserve of up to 300 million euros.
Vantage has already won two anchor investors who will buy shares for 950 million euros: the infrastructure investor Digital Colony and the private equity firm RRJ from Singapore. (APA / red.)
[R9UTZ]
