CELLNEX TELECOM (-) : French 4-to-3 deal: potentially negative read-X from Bouygues' significant integration costs for Crozon; conf call at 7.45am UK likely to shed more light

Research evidence excerpt

CELLNEX TELECOM (-) : French 4-to-3 deal: potentially negative read-X from Bouygues' significant integration costs for Crozon; conf call at 7.45am UK likely to shed more light

Refinitiv

• Cellnex has previously stated (for e.g. see here) that ~57% of its POPs with SFR are in non-dense areas, and

that these are part of the Crozon RAN-sharing between SFR and Bouygues and should therefore have “very

low risk” of churn in a 4-to-3 consolidation scenario given Bouygues will need these sites.

• Cellnex has also stated (for e.g. see here) that of the remaining POPs/sites with SFR, based on Cellnex’s

assessment, only a small portion could be viewed as “redundant” (around 500-600 as per Cellnex), and that

the consortium’s estimate for this is not far from Cellnex’s own assessment.

BNPP View:

*The Bouygues press release is not very specific on towers at this point of time and we could potentially get more

information on the Bouygues conf call this morning (starts at 7.45am UK). However, ahead of the conf call, we

present some thoughts/ scenarios, mainly to try and think about both the significant integration costs and

significant synergies which Bouygues have alluded to in their press release.

*When Bouygues takes on the SFR Crozon sites, the tower lease payment it has to make to Cellnex for using these

sites will be ~EUR 25-26 p.a. per site (BNPP estimates). This represents a spread of ~EUR 16-17k over the ~EUR 9k

average ground lease cost for Cellnex in France (note: the spread for Crozon sites is likely to be even higher given rural

sites are likely to have lower than national average ground lease costs). This spread is down to the sale-and-leaseback

transaction between SFR and Cellnex in 2021 (see here) which had generated EUR 5.2bn of upfront proceeds for SFR.