Metroweb, owner of Milan’s largest fiber optic network and one of the larger fiber optic networks in Europe is set to see a capital reorganization in the next few months due to the fact that F2i infrastructure fund is no longer interested in retaining its 53.2% controlling stake and that the company will need new capital to fund new and huge investments in order to keep on enlarging its fiber optic network in Italy.
In the meantime Metroweb is going on with its plan of investments aiming at covering other 2-3 cities in Italy with fiber in order to reach a total of 7-8% of the Italian population. Investments for about 100 million euros will be financed by Unicredit bank.
As for the capital increase, Metroweb is in talks with Telecom Italia but Vodafone too is said to be quite interested in the deal. However nothing is really decided yet also due to the fact that the Italian Government put forward a national broadband plan a few days ago saying there will be 6 billion euros of public incentives to be distributed to tlc operators who will win a tender offer for each specific geografic area of Italy.
Metroweb will certainly partecipate in the tender but since the details of the tender have not been published yet, the entity of potential investments is not clear yet as well. So a capital reorganization for Metroweb will not be defined till that moment. It is estimated anyway that in order to cover with broadband all the major cities in Italy a capital increase between one billion and 1,5 billions might be needed for Metroweb.
Since December 2012, when Italy’s Government sponsored Fondo Strategico Italiano subscribed a 200 million euros capital increase for a 46.2% stake in Metroweb (through Reti Tlc spa), the company has been investing a total of nearly 300 million euros in new broad band networks, MF-Milano Finanza writes today. Metroweb invested in new fiber in Milan (50 million euros), Bologna (62 millions) , Torino (125 millions) and Genoa (some ten millions).
Back in 2012, the FSI transaction was structured with an initial 200 million investment, followed by an additional 300 millions investment to finance the second phase of the roll-out plan.
