Altice owner Patrick Drahi is considering a sale of a controlling stake in French telco SFR.

As reported by Bloomberg, SFR has been in contact with potential buyers in recent weeks.

Bloomberg reports that a deal could value the French mobile operator at much as €30 billion ($34bn), including debt.

Sources told the publication that SFR could attract interest from domestic competitors, including Bouygues, Iliad, and Orange, plus Middle Eastern carriers such as e&.

SFR has around 26 million mobile customers across France.

SFR’s parent company, Altice, is looking to ease its overall debt, which currently sits at €15.5bn.

Altice France, along with most of its creditors, reached an agreement to slash the company’s debt by €8.6bn ($9.67bn) earlier this year.

Drahi could opt to buy some of the stake in SFR held by debtholders with a goal of cementing greater control before an eventual full sale, noted Bloomberg.

“Altice is focused on implementing the debt agreement, considering the sale of non-core assets, and pursuing SFR’s commercial relaunch and quality of service improvement, two indicators that have already been well oriented for several months,” said a spokesperson for Altice.

It comes a day after Le Monde reported that French mobile network operators SFR and Bouygues Telecom have put their tower joint venture up for sale.

Other Altice sales

Altice has sold a number of key assets in the last couple of years, including its 24.5 percent stake in UK telecoms giant BT to Bharti Airtel, in a deal estimated to be worth about $4 billion at the time. Drahi only increased Altice UK’s stake in BT to 24.5 percent in May 2023, and even had plans to increase it to nearly 30 percent.

However, after years of acquisitions, the company has been looking to shift assets in order to pay down its mounting debt.

The company is open to selling its telecoms business and recently spun off its French data center assets, forming a new company with more than 250 facilities in France, which were then sold to Morgan Stanley.

Altice has been in talks over a deal to sell its Portuguese mobile unit, and has separately looked to sell off its data center unit in the country.