New Zealand infrastructure investment firm Morrison & Co has announced it's bought a 33.3% stake in Spanish open-access wholesale fibre operator, Lyntia Networks.
Morrison & Co’s UK and Europe division head Vincent Gerritsen said Lyntia had a “huge” growth potential because it operated an extensive metropolitan and long-haul fibre network in Spain spanning more than 43,000 kilometres.
It provides wholesale connectivity services to telcos and carriers, cloud providers and data centres and has the second-largest market share in the dark fibre market. A dark or unlit fibre is a spare piece of network fibre in the ground.
Lyntia is the only national carrier-neutral operator working in both lit and dark fibre markets.
Morrison & Co’s chief investment officer Will Smales said: “This acquisition aligns with one of our core investment pillars – to invest in infrastructure vital to support the digitisation of services across Europe, as demand for data centres, mobile phone masts and fibre assets continues to grow.”
Lyntia Networks chief executive José Antonio López said Morrison & Co’s investment was a “strong endorsement” of Lyntia’s growth potential in a rapidly growing fibre market.
“With new investment and Morrison & Co’s expertise in digital infrastructure, this will help position us to accelerate growth and reinforce our market-leading position,” he said.
Morrison & Co confirmed to BusinessDesk that it now holds the remaining shareholding of Lyntia, alongside Switzerland life insurance company Swiss Life and alternative investments company AXA IM Alts, who announced their joint acquisition of Lyntia in May.
The investment has been made on behalf of the Morrison & Co infrastructure partnership, an open-ended global infrastructure fund launched in 2021.
The Lyntia transaction is subject to standard approval processes and expected to close later this year.
Morrison & Co manages investments in digital infrastructure globally, and has investments in Vodafone New Zealand, Fore Freedom in the Netherlands, Kao Data in the UK, CDC Data Centres and Amplitel towers in Australia.
The Spanish telco joins a recent list of networks that Morrison & Co has announced its interest in securing recently, with the company buying FiberLight, a fibre network company in the United States in early July and acquiring Australian fibre telco Uniti Group alongside Brookfield Asset Management back in April.
Morrison & Co teamed up with Australian Retirement Trust and a Californian retirement fund managed by UBS Asset Management to confirm the FiberLight deal, with Bloomberg reporting it being worth US$1 billion ($1.1b), including debt.
