Vodafone reportedly in talks to sell off Spanish operation to Zegona

According to reports operator Vodafone is negotiating the sale of its Spanish business to investment group Zegona.

The reports appear to have emanated from Spanish newspaper Expansion (paywalled) and subsequently reported elsewhere by the likes of Bloomberg and Reuters.

The gist of the reporting is that Zegona is looking for financing to buy Vodafone’s Spanish operations and that the bid could value the whole company at over €5 billion, though Zegona could only purchase a 50% stake. Meanwhile people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg that private equity firms have also expressed interest in the Spanish unit.

Zegona describes its strategy on its website as: “to invest in businesses in the European TMT sector with the objective to improve their performance to deliver attractive shareholder returns with a ‘Buy-Fix-Sell’ Strategy.”

In June this year, unnamed sources told Expansion that Vodafone was working with various external advisors, including Morgan Stanley and Garrigues to help it make a decision on whether or not to sell its operations in Spain, and was talking with a number of funds including Apollo Global Management and Apax Partners.

Reporting at that time put the value of Vodafone Spain at around €3.9 billion, a figure below the sum previously offered by MasMovil for Vodafone. Apparently in March 2021 the firms were involved in merger talks that would value Vodafone Spain at €7.5 billion. Those talks were never concluded, but it shows how much the price has moved around during the back and forth.

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