Telenet snaps up Eltrona

Belgian operator Telenet has expanded its operations into Luxembourg with the acquisition of Eltrona.

Telenet has snapped up all the remaining shares in Luxembourg based operator Eltrona, which is the first acquisition it has made outside of Belgium.

By way of background the firm explains that following its acquisition of Coditel Luxembourg in 2017, SFR-Coditel’s activities were merged with Eltrona’s in April 2020. This transaction resulted in Eltrona’s founding shareholders obtaining ‘50 % +1 of the shares and Telenet 50 % -1’ of the shares of the merged entity. ​

That merged entity carried on under the Eltrona brand in Luxembourg, and now we’re told since Eltrona’s founding shareholders wished to ‘divest their share ownership’ in Eltrona, Telenet has snapped them up and is now Eltrona’s sole shareholder, aside from Eltrona Security Systems which will be acquired by members of the Denzle family.

Which is a round-the-houses way of saying Telenet has bought Eltrona. The transaction is expected to be finalised in the next few weeks with a view to completion by early January 2023.

“This acquisition unlocks new opportunities for both Telenet and Eltrona,” said John Porter, CEO of Telenet. “It offers Telenet the opportunity to evolve as a telecommunications operator in a broader market. At the same time, Eltrona will benefit from Telenet’s success and reputation in Belgium. By becoming the sole owner of Eltrona, I believe Telenet will be even better able to deliver the growth perspectives it deserves for the future in the competitive and evolving Luxembourg market and to make it the number one brand in terms of customer experience.”

Paul Denzle, CEO of Eltrona added: “I am happy to hand over the keys to Telenet, more than 30 years after Eltrona was founded by my father and the other founding families. This will enable Eltrona to write a new chapter and I’m convinced that it will prove to be a success for the company, its customers, its suppliers and its employees. Of course I’ll be sad to hand over the reins to my successor but at the same time, we can all be proud of what we have achieved together. I would like to thank the shareholders and employees of Eltrona as well as all our customers and partners for the time spent together and I’m happy to leave them in the capable hands of Telenet.”

Earlier this year Telenet teamed up with fellow Belgian operator Fluvius to launch a new firm called NetCo – ‘a new self-funding independent infrastructure company’ in Belgium. Comprising the fixed assets of the two owning firms, the idea is NetCo will evolve the current hybrid fibre coaxial network into a Fibre-to-the-Home network, targeting 78% of their combined footprint in Flanders, Belgium by 2038. Telenet will own 66.8% of the venture and Fluvius 33.2%.

Perhaps providing some of cash for all these activities, also this year Telenet struck a deal to offload its passive infrastructure to US-based real estate investment trust (REIT) DigitalBridge, who agreed to pay $820 million for Telenet’s footprint of 3,322 sites, which includes 2,158 owned sites and 1,164 third-party sites.

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