By Jason McGee-Abe
December 2017
The acquisition from Boston-based investment firm Berkshire Partners, which has also invested in Lightower, Crown Castle and Telx, has added 1,644 sites to ATP’s portfolio of digital communication infrastructure assets, making it the largest privately-owned tower company in the Andean Region. ATP now owns over 2,150 sites, and manages more than 32,000 master leased sites and 13 small cell networks deployments.
Daniel Seiner – Torres UnidasDaniel Seiner, CEO of Torres Unidas, will be CEO of the combined company, which now offers 34,150 wireless locations in Chile, Colombia and Peru. Estrella Zaharia will continue with her responsibilities as chief marketing officer.
“The combined portfolio will give Andean Tower Partners an enhanced footprint in the region, and we are eager to continue to help operators densify their 4G networks and bring the dream of 5G to life in our region,” said Seiner.
“These are exceptionally high-quality assets and locations that will allow us to offer an even more compelling value proposition to carriers as they look for a preferred partner that can deliver a full suite of solutions to support their growth in the region.”
Founded by Digital Bridge in 2015, ATP owns, operates and manages telecommunications towers, rooftops, small cells and distributed antenna systems solutions for mobile operators.
“We are excited about the continued progress of ATP following our successful institutional capital raise earlier this year,” added Marc Ganzi, chairman of ATP, and founder and CEO of Digital Bridge Holdings. “We see a significant tower deficit in the Andean Region, and this acquisition will enhance ATP’s ability to meet an increasing need for telecom infrastructure as our wireless carrier partners continue to densify their networks to keep up with anticipated data consumption in the region. We are also equally excited about the combination of these two management teams to ensure execution of our business plan and most importantly meeting the coverage objectives of our customers in the region.”
Equity financing for the transaction was provided by ISA, The Olayan Group, Equity International, and TC Latin America Partners, who collectively committed $230 million earlier this year, and followed on with additional commitments to support the acquisition. In addition to the existing investor group, Colony NorthStar also committed to the transaction in partnership with Digital Bridge Holdings.
Since inception, Digital Bridge has raised over $7.5 billion of equity and debt capital used to acquire and invest in all three core pillars (data centres, towers and fibre/small cells) of mobile and internet infrastructure through six businesses, including: Vantage Data Centers, DataBank, ExteNet Systems, Vertical Bridge, Andean Tower Partners, and Mexico Tower Partners.
Scotiabank was lead arranger and bookrunner for the financing and acted as ATP’s financial advisor. Linklaters LLP provided legal counsel to ATP.
Financial terms of the private transaction were not disclosed.
Source: Capacity Media
https://www.capacitymedia.com/articles/3776176/Andean-Tower-Partners-acquires-Latams-Torres-Unidas
