MTS resumes talks to sell tower infrastructure - paper

MOSCOW. Nov 2 (Interfax) - Mobile TeleSystems (MTS) , Russia's leading mobile service provider has resumed negotiations on the sale of its cell tower company, national daily Kommersant reported on Thursday, citing sources.

Several options for selling the company are being discussed, the paper said. One possibility is to transfer the tower infrastructure to Sistema PJSFC , which owns 42.09% of MTS, for subsequent sale, one source cited by the paper said.

Another source said the tower company could be sold to a consortium of investors that would include Sistema. The parameters of such a deal have not been determined yet.

MTS completed the spin-off of its tower businesses into Tower Infrastructure Company LLC in Dedember 2022. MTS initially planned to complete the creation of the tower company at the beginning of 2022 and sell it in the first quarter of 2022.

The company said earlier that it had not given up the idea of selling its tower infrastructure and planned to work on this in future, after the situation on financial markets stabilizes. MTS had about 23,000 towers as of the end of 2021.

The paper said that initially there were two potential buyers for the tower infrastructure: Ivan Tavrin's Kismet Group and Service-Telecom, which could buy the company in partnership with Gazprombank .