HT Towers: a new step that could lead to the sale of towers

Hrvatski Telekom has completed the process of spinning off part of its business related to passive mobile infrastructure, namely towers, into a new, separate company, HT Towers, which is owned by HT.

As announced on the Zagreb Stock Exchange, the Commercial Court in Zagreb on August 29, 2025, issued a decision formally registering the division of the company, thus the towers and related activities are transferred to the new company HT Towers based in Zagreb.

Goran Toplek, the former HT director of the Mobile Network Engineering and Access Network Performance Department, has been appointed to lead the new company.

– In the spin-off of passive mobile infrastructure assets into a subsidiary specialized in infrastructure management and focusing on this business, we see room for value enhancement – HT briefly commented on this move.

However, as reported earlier this year by the portal Seebiz.hr, when the spin-off of the towers into a separate company was announced, HT conducted an analysis that confirmed that such a move would positively impact the operational efficiency of the business.

Deutsche Telekom, which also owns HT, began considering the option of spinning off the tower business in Croatia back in 2023, when it separated the tower business in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, with plans for Greek and Hungarian towers in the future.

Additionally, DT sold 51% of the business of GD Towers in Germany and Austria to the Canadian investment management company Brookfield and the American private equity firm DigitalBridge. The estimated value of that transaction is €17.5 billion.

Expansion of ‘towcoma’

The spin-off of tower businesses has been a growing trend in Europe for some time. For example, Telekom Austria Group, which operates A1 Hrvatska, spun off its towers back in 2021 into a separate company EuroTeleSites, which thus acquired towers in Bulgaria, Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, and North Macedonia. Two years later, EuroTeleSites was listed on the Vienna Stock Exchange.

A similar move was made two years ago by United Grupa, which owns Telemach, but it decided to sell its infrastructure to the Saudi company Tawal, which is part of the Stc group. Tawal thus acquired about 4,800 towers from United Group in Croatia, Slovenia, and Bulgaria for approximately €1.22 billion, entering the Croatian market.

Unlike those models, HT has spun off the infrastructure into a separate company, but for now, they do not disclose whether they plan to sell it in the future.

Nevertheless, with this move, HT can achieve significant financial benefits, for example, by renting towers to other operators and developing them as a separate segment. Additionally, increased revenues can enhance operational efficiency, reduce debts, or attract foreign investors, following the example of foreign telecoms.

For instance, British Vodafone spun off its towers into a company Vantage Towers, based in Germany in 2020, which went public on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange in March 2021. Last year, Vodafone sold an additional 10% of its stake in Vantage Towers, raising total sales revenue to €6.6 billion, which was used for debt reduction and lowering net debt.

Spanish Telefónica sold its company Telxius TowerCo, with about 30,722 towers in Europe (Spain and Germany) and Latin America (Brazil, Peru, Chile, and Argentina), to the American company American Tower in 2021 for €7.7 billion. As in the case of Vodafone, the funds were intended for debt reduction.

In the same year, French Orange spun off its passive mobile infrastructure in France and Spain into a new company TOTEM, with further plans to spin off operations from other European countries in which it operates.