The Public Investment Fund has offered to buy a majority stake in the telecom towers unit of Saudi Arabia's largest phone company, the next step in its ambition to create a cellular tower behemoth in the kingdom.
The PIF made a non-binding offer to Saudi Telecom Co. for 51 per cent of Telecommunications Towers Co, according to a statement on Monday. STC is assessing the offer for Tawal and said the entire business has been valued at $5.8 billion on a cash- and debt-free basis.
The fund has been weighing a deal to combine the mobile phone infrastructure of Saudi Telecom and Zain Saudi Arabia in a merger that would form the kingdom's largest cellular towers company, Bloomberg reported last year. The PIF and two other investors acquired stakes in Zain Saudi's 8,069 telecom towers in February.
Saudi Telecom, which is 64 per cent owned by the PIF, spun out its more than 15,000 towers into the Tawal subsidiary in 2019 and capitalized it with 2.5 billion riyals ($670 million).
