Philippines’ Globe Telecom Sells Cellular Towers For $340 Million To Macquarie-Backed Consortium

Globe Telecom—the Philippine phone giant jointly owned by Ayala Corp. and Singapore Telecommunications—has agreed to sell 1,350 cellular towers to a consortium backed by a unit of Australia’s Macquarie Group for 20 billion pesos ($340 million).

The assets are being acquired by the Phil-Tower Consortium, comprising Macquarie Capital and Global Network, Inc. Globe will lease back the towers—located in the Philippine islands of Visayas and Mindanao—for an initial period of 15 years, the company said in a statement filed to the Philippine Stock Exchange on Tuesday. Proceeds from the divestment will be used to fund the company’s capital expenditures and repay maturing debts, it said.

The transaction comes on the heels of Globe’s divestment in August of a separate portfolio of 5,709 towers to a company backed by U.S. private equity firm KKR & Co. and a joint venture between Stonepeak Partners and the Manila Electric Co. for 71 billion pesos.

“These monetization efforts will provide an uplift to Globe’s overall value, supporting our goal of enabling the digital lives of Filipinos,” Globe president and CEO Ernest Cu said in a statement.

Globe and its parent Ayala Corp.—the Philippines’ oldest conglomerate—has been stepping up its investments in digital technologies. In March, the duo formed an alliance with ST Telemedia Global Data Centres to help the Singapore-based company expand its footprint in the Philippines amid booming demand for server space from e-commerce and other digital platforms.