Abertis aims for as much as US$1.9 billion with phone towers IPO

[MADRID] Abertis Infraestructuras SA will seek to raise as much as 1.7 billion euros (S$2.5 billion) by listing the shares of its telecommunication-towers unit in Madrid.

Abertis, a Barcelona-based infrastructure company, plans to sell 55 per cent of its Cellnex Telecom SAU division, it said in a regulatory filing Tuesday, without disclosing the price of the stock or the date of the sale. The offering size will raise between 1.4 billion euros and 1.7 billion euros, including an over-allotment, implying a market value for the unit of as much as 2.8 billion euros, according to a term sheet obtained by Bloomberg News.

The Cellnex sale would follow 5.3 billion euros of Spanish IPOs in the first quarter, the most for a three-month period since at least 1985, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Cellnex is the biggest independent mobile-tower operator in Europe, with 7,472 base-station sites in Spain and 7,698 in Italy, according to today's filing.

Cellnex aims to continue expanding its operations following the initial public offering, Abertis said. The joint global coordinators of the IPO are Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and CaixaBank SA.

Abertis's market value is 15.4 billion euros.

BLOOMBERG