Vodafone has announced the sale of a further 10 percent stake in the leading European mobile tower company Vantage Towers for 1.3 billion euros. This is part of CEO Margherita Della Valle's plan to simplify the sprawling telecommunications company and reduce its debt.

The sale of the stake in Vantage Towers to a consortium of long-term infrastructure investors, led by Global Infrastructure Partners and KKR, will convert the joint venture partnership to a 50/50 ownership structure and help Vodafone reduce its debt burden.

Through this recent deal, the total revenue from the Vantage divestiture increased to 6.6 billion euros after an initial transaction in 2022. The stake was sold at the same price of 32 euros per share. The Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia financed the 2022 deal.

Vantage Towers operates tens of thousands of mobile phone masts in ten European countries, including the United Kingdom, Germany, and Italy.

The UK-based company stated that the proceeds from the sale would be used to reduce its debt and to bring the net debt to adjusted EBITDA ratio after leases into the lower half of the target range.

The announcement comes as the company continues to sell off assets. In March, the FTSE-100 company agreed to sell its Italian operations to Swisscom for 8 billion euros.

This followed the sale of Vodafone Spain for up to 5 billion euros to Zegona Communications, founded by two former Virgin Media managers, which was announced in October.

In June 2023, Vodafone and Three UK confirmed plans for a domestic merger, which is currently being reviewed by the Competition and Markets Authority.

At the time of the announcement of the exit from Italy, the company said it would also return up to 4 billion euros to shareholders through share buybacks and reduce its dividend to 4.5 cents per share from 9 cents the previous year, starting from 2025.

Kester Mann, Director of Consumer and Connectivity at research group CCS Insight, said that the sector has attempted to monetize infrastructure assets in recent years. "Selling towers has proven to be a popular move for telecommunications operators looking to leverage passive infrastructure assets to reduce debt and finance costly network investments," he observed.

The European mast market is in a consolidation phase.

The German group Deutsche Telekom agreed in 2022 to sell a majority stake in its tower business to Brookfield Asset Management and the private equity group DigitalBridge Group in a deal that valued the business at 17.5 billion euros.

Spain's Telefónica and KKR agreed in 2021 to sell Telxius, a telecommunications mast unit, to the Boston-based company American Tower for 7.7 billion euros.