TIM Brasil announced plans to sell or take offline over half of the towers it acquired from failed rival Oi, due to overlap with its current portfolio in Brazil.
BNAmericas reported, the operator is looking to get rid of 4,300 out of 7,200 towers after taking over a part of Oi’s mobile assets. TIM chief technology and innovation officer Leonardo Capdeville stated the cut down in towers is due mainly to already having presence in the same areas as Oi, however, 2,800 sites will be new locations and kept for expansion.
TIM expects the decommissioning process to last until 2030 but aims to offload over 3,500 over the next two years. The company stated it is writing down about BRL4.4 billion (US$884 million) worth of leasing contracts as “additional IFRS16 financial debt.”
The sale of towers is also a stipulation of antitrust regulator Cade in approving the consortium of TIM Brasil, Telefonica and America Movil buying the assets.
The company expects to save 4% in CAPEX and significantly reduce in OPEX from taking the sites offline.
Tower company SBA expects to bear the brunt of tower shedding and noted consolidation in Latin American markets puts its business at risk. The company counted Oi as a client and 1,568 of 7,525 of leased towers to the operator overlapped with those of the three acquiring operators.
TIM expects the acquisition to add an additional BRL1.8 billion in revenue and BRL1.1 billion in EBITDA in the 2022 financial year.
The company also detailed its market share will jump from 20% to 27%. The acquisition also more than doubled its spectrum holdings and boost its tower portfolio by 10%.
