Altice France owner Patrick Drahi has shortlisted four bidders for a controlling stake in French fiber company XpFibre.

Drahi’s Altice currently owns a majority stake of 50.01 percent in XpFibre, a fiber optic company that has passed 7 million premises with its wholesale broadband network.

Bloomberg reports that the shortlist includes digital infrastructure investment firms DigitalBridge, Brookfield Asset Management, Vauban Infrastructure Partners, and private equity firm KKR.

Initial offers from the shortlisted bidders value XpFibre at around €8 billion ($9.4 billion) including debt.

The next round of bids are expected to be submitted next month.

Drahi has been looking to shift Altice’s controlling stake in XpFibre since 2024, but nothing came of those efforts.

The telecoms tycoon has put the majority of Altice’s French assets up for sale as the company looks to reduce its debt.

In October, Drahi rejected an €17 billion ($19.9bn) for its SFR mobile unit in France placed by a consortium of French telcos, including Orange, Bouygues Telecom, and Free. The offer was said to be far short of the near €30bn ($35bn) wanted for the carrier.

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 $4bn 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.