Indonesia’s Indosat nearing towers deal with Mitratel: sources

INDOSAT Ooredoo Hutchison has agreed to sell a portfolio of telecommunications towers to Mitratel for about 1.65 trillion rupiah (S$145 million) as part of the Indonesian carrier’s efforts to trim its assets.

PT Indosat and PT Dayamitra Telekomunikasi, as the two companies are formally known, have signed a deal that involves 997 towers, according to a statement to the stock exchange on Wednesday (Feb 15), confirming an earlier Bloomberg News report. Indosat also agreed to rent 983 towers from Mitratel for 138.6 billion rupiah for 10 years.

Indosat has been exploring a sale of about 1,800 sites amid rising demand for digital infrastructure assets in South-east Asia, Bloomberg News reported in August. A transaction by Indosat could raise about US$250 million, people familiar with the matter said at the time.

A sale follows Indosat’s disposal of more than 4,200 towers to EdgePoint Infrastructure, a firm backed by DigitalBridge Group and Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, for US$750 million back in 2021. Last year, Indosat agreed to form a US$300 million joint venture for its data centres with Big Data Exchange, the data-centre platform owned by investment firm I Squared.

CK Hutchison Holdings and Qatar’s Ooredoo combined their Indonesian telecom businesses in a US$6 billion transaction that completed in January last year, as the groups sought to fend off competition in South-east Asia’s biggest market by subscribers.

Mitratel, the infrastructure services unit of state-owned PT Telkom Indonesia, raised about US$1.3 billion in a Jakarta initial public offering in 2021. Its shares have dropped around 12.5 per cent so far this year, valuing the company at about US$3.9 billion. BLOOMBERG