The Latest: TAWAL Towers, the passive infrastructure unit of Saudi Telecommunications Company (STC), has agreed to purchase more than 4,800 towers from United Group companies based in Bulgaria, Croatia and Slovenia. The towers will be held by a new European division, the aim being that TAWAL will look to make further strategic purchases in Europe. Implications: The move is somewhat unexpected, in that it diverges from our expectations that STC would focus on the Middle East and Asia for expansion. TAWAL's sole foreign foray to date has been in Pakistan, where it acquired AWAL Telecom in early 2022 and received a towerco operating licence later that year. The Pakistan deal covered fewer than 100 tower sites and, while we recognised the deal's importance in opening up that country's infrastructure market to specialised players, its small scale was thought likely to be representative of AWAL's expansion model. The Europe deal shows that the company's plans are much more ambitious and the focus on a small privately-owned telco in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) reinforces the notion that TAWAL will look to modestly-sized operator-owned assets for future deals.
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