Mexico’s Grupo Alfa has abandoned its plans to sell its telecoms arm Axtel despite a high number of interested bidders.
The industrial conglomerate had concluded the first phase of the planned sale process, during which it confirmed that “Axtel successfully attracted a double-digit number of participants.” In this phase, Grupo Alfa was open to selling either Axtel’s infrastructure business unit or the entire company.
The sale process had entered its second phase based on the high number of bids, Alfa accepting bids on the whole company. However, its Board of Directors determined that it would be in the shareholders’ best interest to redirect efforts to attract strategic proposals for its two separate business units – infrastructure and services.
To this end, Alfa has abandoned the sale in order to “maintain all options open to maximise value”, noting that Axtel has the infrastructure and proven capabilities to reach this goal given its advanced functional separation process and the solid position of its infrastructure and services units to capitalise on increased demand for connectivity.
Alfa will continue to focus on initiatives that drive the full autonomy of subsidiaries and debt reduction as part of the gradual and orderly transformational process that it is pursuing. The group stated that it had not ruled out selling off Axtel’s infrastructure unit – or other strategic alternatives – to help reduce its debt.
