Brazil’s Oi has sold off a data centre unit to Piemonte Holding for BRL367 million ($65.3 million) in a further manouevre to restructure its debt burden.
The holding firm – also based in Brazil – has purchased five data centres from Oi in a deal which saw it make an upfront cash payment of BRL250 million. It will pay the rest in installments. Piemonte will fold the data centres into its Titan Elea Digital unit, increasing its share of Brazil’s colocation market to around 10%.
In a statement, Oi described the asset sale as the first of several planned across the next few years as it seeks to address its debts, which totalled BRL65.4 billion when it filed for bankruptcy protection in June 2016.
Since then, Oi has reached agreements to sell operations and assets to its former rivals Claro, TIM Brasil and Telefonica. Through this transformation plan, Oi aims to become the “largest provider of telecommunications infrastructure” in Brazil.
Piemonte Holding CEO Alessandro Lombardi referred to Oi’s transformation strategy as an “injection of optimism for Brazil”.
