On Monday, Ardian, the (mostly) employee-owned private equity investment house with more than $114 billion in managed client assets, announced its first-ever transaction targeting the telecommunications fiber market in Spain. Ardian Infrastructure will buy 100 percent of Spain’s fastest-growing fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) provider, Barcelona’s Adamo, from Swedish real assets investor EQT Group. Price and other deal terms were not made public.
Adamo–which was the first telecom provider in Spain to offer service with speeds up to 1 GB/s–currently provides high-speed internet coverage to around 1.8 million homes, serving around 250,000 individual subscribers over 27 provinces across Spain. In coming years, the company is hoping to reach 3.2 million homes, expanding its core network to 11,000 kms in coming years, primarily by expanding into rural areas with virtually no high-speed internet access. According to Ardian, it plans to support Adamo’s goals through organic expansion of its existing network along with possible network acquisitions.
“We are very pleased to be able to announce our first investment in the telecommunications sector in Spain,” said Juan Angoitia, co-head of Ardian Infrastructure in Europe. “The Spanish market remains very attractive for us. Our focus will now be on working together with the Adamo team to create value for the company and all its stakeholders, while at the same time helping to address the serious problems that rural areas in Spain face and boosting their economic and social development.”
“We are proud to incorporate a partner like Ardian that brings a great experience in the sector, a deep knowledge of the market and a great sensitivity towards our contribution to society,” said Adamo CEO Martin Czermin. “Their support comes at a key moment to be able to continue driving Adamo’s growth both organically and inorganically.”
The deal to acquire Adamo adds to a priority weighting for telecommunications at Ardian Infrastructure, whose portfolio already includes a 30.2 percent controlling stake in INWIT, Italy’s leading tower operator, and a 26 percent stake in EWE, one of Germany’s largest utilities and a leading provider of telecommunications services.
EQT originally acquired a majority stake in Adamo in 2017, marking the company’s first private equity investment in Spain, and now its second successful exit. Since that time, EQT notes, Adamo has grown its fiber network exponentially from 100,000 homes passed in the Cataluña region to 1.8 million homes across a nationwide footprint. During the same period, Adamo transitioned from a pure retail model into an open access platform, securing wholesale contracts with four out of five national operators in the Spanish market, as well as with over 160 local operators.
