By Josh Beckerman
American Tower Corp., which operates wireless and broadcast
towers, agreed to buy two Brazil tower portfolios from Tim Celular
SA for about 3 billion Brazilian reais, or about $1.2 billion.
Tim Celular is part of Tim Participações, a unit of Telecom
Italia SpA.
Earlier Friday, Telecom Italia said it would explore options to
integrate Tim Participações with Oi SA. Oi, the Brazilian telecom
provider, said in August that it hired Brazilian investment bank
BTG Pactual to look at potential deals including a possible
acquisition of Tim Participações.
American Tower said one portfolio includes about 5,240 towers.
The second portfolio consists of about 1,240 towers, which are
subject to certain preemptive acquisition rights by third
parties.
The deal is expected to close during the first half of 2015. The
towers in the deal are expected to generate about $171 million in
annual run rate revenue.
American Tower, which operates as a real-estate investment
trust, said third-quarter revenue rose 28% to $1.04 billion as the
company continued to benefit from "unabated" adoption of advanced
mobile products and services. The company has about 70,000
communications sites.
Write to Josh Beckerman at josh.beckerman@wsj.com
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