Friday, January 21, 2011
Deutsche Telekom AG,which yesterday said it may sell its U.S. tower assets to fund the purchase of spectrum for its fourth-generation network, may get about $2 billion for them, a Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. analyst said.
Deutsche Telekom’s T-Mobile USA unit, the fourth-largest mobile-phone operator in the U.S. after Verizon Wireless, AT&T Inc. and Sprint Nextel Corp., said yesterday it may sell non- core assets finance the building of a next-generation network using long-term evolution, or LTE.
“We have the biggest number of those towers compared to our competitors and that’s not something as an operator you run with utmost efficiency,” Chief Executive Officer Rene Obermann said at a presentation yesterday in New York on the unit’s strategy. “That sale could be significant,” he said, without providing details except to say there’s “no timeframe for selling the towers.”
Obermann said the U.S. unit is exploring options to acquire additional spectrum, including entering partnerships. The U.S. unit’s chief technology officer, Neville Ray, said T-Mobile will need a spectrum partner by 2014 or 2015. Deutsche Telekom spokesman Andreas Leigers declined to comment on the valuation estimate for the towers.
T-Mobile USA, which accounts for about a quarter of Bonn based Deutsche Telekom’s sales, has seen profit slide as it trailed rivals in building out a third-generation mobile network and missed out on Apple Inc. iPhones.
“A spin-off of the towers could raise enough cash to invest in more spectrum,” Bernstein analyst Robin Bienenstock said in a note this month.
The company saw annual customer growth slow to 10 percent from more than 40 percent between 2002 and 2008. In 2009, it had a 3.2 percent growth in net new customers and the share of high- margin customers slid to 79 percent from 89 percent in 2003.
By: DocMemory
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