India's Idea Cellular and Vodafone India have both agreed to sell their tower businesses to American Tower Corporation (ATC) subsidiary ATC Telecom Infrastructure for a combined $1.2 billion.
In separate deals, Idea Cellular will sell its entire stake in tower unit Idea Cellular Infrastructure Services for 40 billion rupees ($61.2 billion), while Vodafone will sell a tower business for 38.5 billion rupees.
The acquisition will add around 20,000 towers to ATC's Indian portfolio and generate around 8 billion in gross margin during their first year in the portfolio.
As part of the agreements, ATC, Vodafone and Idea have entered a preferred partner arrangement, with ATC agreeing to provide the operators with service level and process efficiency benefits while the operators grant ATC with preferential rights to new tower leasing deals.
ATC purchased Viom Networks in 2016 and rebranded its wholly-owned Indian subsidiary as ATC Telecom Infrastructure.
“We expect the addition of these two high quality portfolios to be highly complementary to our existing assets and to contribute to long-term leasing growth as India’s leading mobile operators accelerate their 4G network deployments.” ATC CEO Jim Taiclet said.
The transactions still require regulatory approval and are expected to close in the first half of next year