Altice’s problems began in Portugal, with suspicions of fraud, corruption and money laundering hanging over its unofficial number two, Armando Pereira. It is Portugal which could provide part of the solution by contributing to the telecoms giant’s debt reduction effort.
Since September, the group of billionaire Patrick Drahi has put its Portuguese assets up for sale. Namely Meo, the first Portuguese operator, present in mobile and fixed telephony, internet access and pay television, and the optical fiber deployment company FastFiber.
According to Bloomberg, Saudi Telecom is one of the contenders. Having significant liquidity, the group, 64% owned by the Saudi sovereign fund, would continue its investments in Europe. He recently became the largest shareholder of the Spanish operator Telefonica by taking 9.9% of its capital for 2.1 billion euros.
Earlier in the year, its subsidiary TowerCo Tawal bought a portfolio of more than 4,800 mobile telecommunications towers in Bulgaria, Croatia and Slovenia from United Group BV. Amount of the operation: 1.22 billion euros.
Saudi Telecom is not the only one in the running. Other telecoms players and investment funds would also study the file and could submit offers before Christmas. Altice expects a lot from this sale, valuing Meo between 7 and 9.5 billion euros.
Sale by apartments
As in the plan envisaged for SFR, Patrick Drahi’s group could only sell part of the capital of Altice Portugal while remaining a majority shareholder. According to Bloomberg, he would favor private investors rather than industrial or strategic partners.
During an exchange with investors in September, the leader declared himself open to selling almost all of his assets at the right price in order to reduce his debt by 60 billion dollars.
Among the family jewels, we find Altice Dominicana, the subsidiary in the Dominican Republic valued in 2017 at 2.5 billion dollars, or Teads, the French specialist in online advertising video, bought in 2017 for 285 million dollars. euros.
In this sale by apartments, Altice has already sold, in November, a good part of its data centers in France to the Morgan Stanley fund for 535 million euros. The group also intends to loosen the grip of debt through refinancing operations. Recently, its subsidiary Altice International raised a new loan of 800 million euros, postponing the repayment of most of its debt by two years.