Telus separates his park from cell laps from the rest of its activities by creating a new autonomous entity in which the fund acquired a participation of 49.9 % at the cost of $ 1.3 billion.
The entity created is called Terrion and will have its registered office in Montreal.
Terrion will hold all the Telus Towers and Cellular Antennas in the country, that is to say a total of 3000 sites distributed in four provinces: Quebec, Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta.
Telus will be the majority shareholder of Terrion with a participation of 50.1 %. And also tenant. An eight -year -old agreement, has been agreed for capacity rental in the towers.
The operation unveiled on Friday values Terrion at more than $ 2.5 billion and is the culmination of a competitive process launched by Telus last winter in order to find a partner interested in investing in its network of transmission towers.
Telus becomes the first major telecommunications company in the country to sell its towers. However, it is a practice observed for several years in other countries.
The fund has several billion investments in private transmission towers abroad.
The Quebec retirement fund manager has been an important shareholder for six years of Vertical Bridge, an installed wireless infrastructure company in Boca Raton, Florida, having partnerships with large American operators like AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon.
The Caisse has also been an investor for four years in American Tower Europe, a company present in Germany, France and Spain.
And since last year, the Caisse has been a shareholder in Connexa, the most important network of mobile telecommunications infrastructure in New Zealand.
The expertise acquired by the cash register in the sector since 2019 has helped to convince Telus to form the partnership, indicates in an interview Emmanuel Jaclot, chief of infrastructure at the fund.
The Montreal institutional manager was obviously based on his experience abroad during negotiations with Telus to structure Terrion.
The assets of the wireless infrastructure sector are positioned inside a portfolio that wants to be relatively “defensive” for the cash register.
Yields vary depending on the growth potential in the various markets.
Emmanuel Jaclot says he is waiting for a “a little more defensive” yield than what is generated on average by the infrastructure portfolio of the fund.
Terron’s growth and performance will come from the construction of new transmission towers for Telus across Canada, and possibly for other operators.
If it appears natural for a telecom operator elsewhere in the world to depart from a portion of his Tours portfolio, this was not yet the case in Canada.
Terrion could certainly be interested in buying the portfolios of Tours de Rogers and BCE, for example, if these companies decided to imitate Telus. “It would make it possible to make this Terrion platform fatty that we have just created,” says Emmanuel Jaclot.
The box values assets such as cell towers for several reasons.
If they are considered to be resistant to economic shocks, they are also interesting in the context where a back wind is noticeable with the growth of data use from 20 to 25 % per year, underlines Emmanuel Jaclot.
“It inevitably takes on equipment for data transmission,” he says.
The leaders of BCE and Rogers will certainly carefully analyze the partnership unveiled on Friday between Telus and the Caisse.
In a research report published in March, analyst Maher Yaghi, of SCOTIA, stressed that Rogers could obtain a value of around six billion dollars for his cellular towers and that BCE could obtain up to four billion for his.
By swarming their Transmission Tours Parks, telecommunications companies no longer need to make capital investments to maintain aging infrastructure and can focus more directly on their strategic commercial objectives.
The management of Telus had made known its intention a few months ago to carry out a strategic process to assess the possibility of departing from its cellular towers.
Telus had undertaken to reduce his level of debt. The 1.3 billion harvest is a gesture made in this direction for the company of Vancouver.
“We think the timing is good. It gives us good financial flexibility, ”comments in an interview Nazim Benhadid, head of technological services at Telus.
“We think that there is really a market for shared and building towers with wireless traffic growth of around 30 % year old year which requires an increase in the number of tricks to maintain speeds at their current level,” he said.
The Telus cellular towers become available in a commercial setting for all wireless network operators in the country and other companies with the right to operate in Canada and need to settle in to issue signals.
The former Télus leader, Eros Spadotto, was appointed to direct Terrion.
