Telefonica, a Spanish international telecommunications company, has sold its four Data Centers (DCs) to a leading independent investment management company Asterion Industrial Partners in exchange for a 20 percent stake in the Nabiax hosting business. With this deal, Telefonica is forming a strategic partnership with the company’s current shareholder, Asterion and its co-investors, who retain the remaining 80% of the share capital. Two of the properties sold are located in Chile and two are in Spain.
The contract includes an agreement for housing services in the four DCs on identical terms and conditions as set out in the previous transaction. The deal does not include the sale of Telefónica’s owned servers, as well as the management and access to their customers hosted on those servers. As a result, Telefónica will continue providing and managing the services it has offered to its customers from these data centers and will support direct relationships with such customers.
In 2019, Asterion bought 11 data centers from Telefónica for $616 million. The deal amounted to a service capacity of 29 megawatt in seven countries: two each in Argentina, Brazil, Spain and Peru, with additional sites in Chile, Mexico and the United States. Following the acquisition, Asterion founded Nabiax to offer accommodation and hosting services throughout Spain and Latin America.
Moreover, Nabiax and Telefónica will further develop existing commercial collaborations and explore new common business opportunities, including new services, edge computing and data center automation.
As always, the approval of the relevant regulatory authorities and certain administrative procedures are required to complete the transaction. This deal is expected to take place in two phases: one for Spanish DCs and the other for Chilean DCs.