Apax nears deal to buy Warburg Pincus out of €6.5bn telecoms group Odido
Purchase would follow private equity owners’ decision to shelve planned listing of Dutch operator due to market instability
Apax is nearing a deal to buy Warburg Pincus out of their joint investment in Dutch telecoms group Odido, months after the private equity groups abandoned a highly anticipated listing of the business.
The deal would value Odido, formerly T-Mobile Netherlands, at about €6.5bn, according to people familiar with the matter. An agreement might be reached in the coming days, some of the people said, although they cautioned that no final decision had been taken and that talks could yet shift.
Odido, which posted revenues of nearly €2.4bn last year, is the largest mobile provider in the Netherlands with more than 7.5mn customers, and a leading fibre-optic broadband provider in the country.
A sale would come after Apax and Warburg Pincus pulled their planned listing of the business, which was set to be one of Europe’s largest floats this year, due to concerns over market instability.
Odido was then rocked by a cyber attack, with the personal details of millions of its customers leaked online. The company’s chief executive was forced to publicly apologise for the incident.
Since then, the private equity owners have received approaches for the business from prospective buyers including STC, Saudi Arabia’s state-backed telecoms group, two of the people said.
Warburg and Apax, which acquired Odido from Germany’s Deutsche Telekom and Swedish telecom operator Tele2 for €5.1bn in 2022, have sought to expand the business against rivals KPN and VodafoneZiggo, particularly in broadband.
“Warburg have been good owners, and we’d expect more of the same from Apax. There is a long growth runway still to come in broadband market share, and we think that is the attraction of owning Odido,” said Russell Waller, analyst at New Street Research.
Warburg Pincus, Odido, Apax and STC declined to comment.
The deal would come after VodafoneZiggo underwent a similar change of ownership.
VodafoneZiggo, which was previously owned 50:50 by Liberty Global and Vodafone, was recently merged into the Ziggo Group, with the US group taking a 90 per cent stake in the new entity. Liberty paid Vodafone €1bn to buy out most of its stake.