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Trilantic Capital Partners has partnered with Investindustrial to buy a 48 per cent stake in Spanish telco Euskaltel.

The deal ends weeks of speculation for the company after bidders dropped out of the process owing to fears over regulatory changes and after majority shareholder KutxaBank reportedly rejected Trilantic's initial bid for the company. 

KuxtaBank, which owns a 68 per cent interest in the business, needs to reduce its stake to 50 per cent by next year to comply with Basel III. Euskaltel has been on the block since the start of the year.

Last year Euskaltel had sales of €334m and Ebitda of €131m, but a statement from Investindustrial indicated that the firm believed there was “significant room to further improve its profitability”. Financial details were not disclosed but the equity investment is over €200m, the firm added. 

The Basque region is one of the richest in Spain, which still has low levels of broadband penetration (24 per cent) compared with the European average (34 per cent). The company also stands to benefit from increased demand as average speed required by users is expected to increase by 45 per cent over the next two years, according to Investindustrial. In addition, Euskaltel operates a fibre-to-the-node network, which is capable of providing higher bandwidth compared with rival telcos.

Click here to read our analysis of Euskaltel. 

Picture: Source