Cube buys into French telecoms firm for €66m

French infrastructure fund manager Cube Infrastructure has just become one half of the shareholding structure of French telecommunications company Covage.
Cube has spent €66 million to acquire 50 percent of Covage from French infrastructure group VINCI. The infrastructure investor will pay VINCI €30 million upfront with the remaining €36 million to be paid out over the next three years, depending on Covage’s results. The other shareholder in Covage is Canadian broadband company Axia NetMedia Corporation.

Art Price, chairman and chief executive of Axia, said that “the Cube investment is an important step in Covage’s evolution as a growing operating company. VINCI has provided the partnership with the benefit of their skills while Covage was focused on network construction and has been a major influence on Covage becoming a major player in the French marketplace”.

Covage was founded in 2006 and has since established a 3,700-kilometre fibre optic network across France. It also operates a submarine cable between Corsica and mainland France. Covage’s customers include a variety of national, regional and international broadband and data service providers. Cube has been busy on the acquisitions trail ever since it closed its fund on €1.1 billion last year.

Earlier in January, the infrastructure investor acquired the French division of Neolectra Group, an independent power producer with assets in France and Spain, from US energy firm ArcLight Capital. And last December, Cube spent more than €300 million buying Arriva Deutschland, Germany’s second-largest private regional transport operator, from Deutsche Bahn.