China telecom towers business gets $150m from sovereign investor

The proceeds will support new tower constructions. Guodong Tower is planning an A-share listing after the funding round, according to a statement. The company claims to have received funding from investors including Morgan Stanley, SPDB International, CICC, and Ping An Capital in previous rounds.

Guodong Tower was launched in 2007 to build and communication infrastructure and lease it to three major domestic operators: China Telecom, China Mobile, and China Unicom. It has now claims 40,000 communications stations across 31 sites in China.

The company’s co-construction model, whereby each partner-operator builds its own towers is said to have saved nearly 1m square meters of land to date. This has translated into CNY 10 bn (USD 1.4bn) in land cost savings, according to the company.

Guodong Tower claims to rank among the top ten independent tower companies globally by number of base stations. Market share is relatively higher in China’s eastern and southern regions.

The company was said to have achieved stable annual growth and a relatively high net profit margin in 2022 despite challenges posed by COVID-19, including lockdown policies. There are about 1,000 staff.

“This financing round also marks the interest of large international investment institutions in Guodong,” Xiaoling Ji, a director and deputy general manager at the company said, highlighting the tower industry’s strengths in terms of income continuity.

“With the continuous increase of mobile data traffic, operators will continue to increase investment in the transformation, optimization and upgrading of communication networks, and Guodong will have a broader space for development.”

China Renaissance was the exclusive financial advisor of the deal.

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• Topics
• Greater China
• Technology
• Infrastructure
• Expansion
• Mubadala
• China
• Sovereign wealth fund