Telekom Serbia has become one of the biggest clients of a TV infrastructure provider company that it used to own.
The Serbian state-owned telecommunications company has been relying on Sky Towers Infrastructure to manage its antenna arrays in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro after selling it to Actis in 2023 for 42. This company, as a reminder, was owned by Telekom Srbija until the end of 2023.
Sky Towers Infrastructure, a company that Telekom Srbija sold to Actis in December 2023 for €420 million, with a clause for an additional €80 million payment to Telekom if the company achieves certain financial targets under its new ownership, ended 2-24 with a profit of 2.6 billion Dinars, or €22.2 million.
The sale of Sky Towers Infrastructure, secured significant financing for Telekom all of it to be paid in installments, depending on the company’s future performance. This sale is a testament to Telekom Serbia’s strategic focus on divesting non-core assets and maximizing returns on investments. Namely, the company managing the antenna arrays reported a total of 384.79 million dinars at the end of 2024 from the sale of goods and services totaling – approximately 3.3 million euros. Of that amount, 234.1 million Dinars (about 2 million Euro) is from Telekom.
Other important clients include Cetin, a sister company of Yettel (owned by the PPF Group), which accounted for 107.7 million Dinars and the telecommunications company A1 (36 million Dinars), while other domestic clients accounted for 5.7 million Dinars.
What Telekom Sold
The BIRN portal said in a November 25, 2023 article that the British Actis, through a firm registered in Luxembourg, planned to purchase 1,827 antenna arrays and related infrastructure from Telekom – some located in Serbia (995), others in Bosnia and Herzegovina (725), and Montenegro (107).
Telekom set up 3 companies under the same name — “Sky Towers Infrastructure” — in the first half of 2023 in Serbia, Montenegro, and Bosnia and Herzegovina through its subsidiaries, with headquarters in Belgrade, Podgorica, and Banja Luka. Since mid-November 2023, Telekom has been increasing its share capital by injecting assets into all these companies.
Telekom then became the owner of a similarly named company in Podgorica and one registered in Banja Luka, until the sale of Sky Towers Infrastructure with its headquarters in Belgrade to Actis on December 29, 2023.
Officially, the amount that Actis paid Telekom has never been disclosed, nor has any information been made public about the rental prices Telekom is being charged to use the antenna arrays from its former company.
Confirmation that Actis bought Telekom’s antenna arrays and related infrastructure finally came from Actis, 24 days after the new owner of Telekom’s Sky Towers Infrastructure company, Actis Luna Telecom Tower d.o.o. Beograd, was registered in the Serbian Business Registers Agency.
In a statement issued in London on January 22, 2024, Actis said that this was its first transaction in the Western Balkans, and that the newly established company was a “consortium led by Actis.” The London-based company added that this investment — its 8th in digital infrastructure — bring its total investments in the sector to a billion Dollars.
Source: N1
