Mexico-based mobile giant América Móvil fulfilled its long-gestated ambition to spin out its tower assets in Latin America, announcing that "certain assets, liabilities and capital" have been transferred to a new company named Sitios Latinoamérica, or Sitios Latam for short.

The new towerco has an inventory of 29,090 towers, of which 39% are in Brazil. The remainder are distributed across Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Puerto Rico and Uruguay.

Sitios Latam has also just started the construction of towers in Peru, and indicated it would continue to evaluate growth opportunities in the region. The towers will be available to other wireless service providers in all 14 markets.

Figure 1: América Móvil's new company, Sitios Latam, has 29,090 towers in territories outside of Mexico.
(Source: Xinhua/Alamy Stock Photo)

It was previously indicated that Sitios Latam would own about 36,000 towers. In addition, the Dominican Republic was included in the original list of countries but now appears to have been excluded.

Sitios Latam will be listed on the Mexican Stock Exchange, although without an underwritten public offering. América Móvil shareholders are to receive one share in Sitios Latam for every 20 shares they hold in América Móvil.

Long-running plan

América Móvil first unveiled its ambition to spin off its Latam tower assets in February last year, finally gaining shareholder approval for the move in September. Its aim, it said at the time, was to "maximize the value of the infrastructure by becoming an independent entity entirely focused on development, construction and co-location of towers for wireless services."

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The operator group has already offloaded its Mexican tower assets, moving them into a publicly traded vehicle called Telesites in December 2015. Telesites then completed its merger into Operadora de Sites Mexicanos (Opsimex) in March 2022. Opsimex now operates 20,302 towers in Mexico and Costa Rica.

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— Anne Morris, contributing editor, special to Light Reading